iXBRL tax and accounts filing system nears

April Fools’ Day may yet turn out to be an inauspicious date for the government to launch the snappily named Online Extensible Business Reporting Language, otherwise known as iXBRL.

The general feeling among many tax and accounting professionals is that the government is foolish in pressing ahead with its 1 April implementation date in the face of howls of protest and calls for a delay to the internet tax-filing technology from six of the UK’s largest accountancy bodies.

These calls have come rather late in the day. Businesses have known for five years that iXBRL was on the horizon, while Companies House has also stated that electronic account-filing will be mandatory by 2013, announcing in 2009 that it would join HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) in accepting certain filings in iXBRL format.

The changes require all company tax returns and corporation tax payments made from April to be filed using iXBRL, which provides a method for tagging elements of financial and business reporting data that renders them in forms readable to both humans and computers.

And there is, in fact, general enthusiasm among finance professionals for online tax filing, the benefits of which will include reduced errors for the re-keying of financial data, faster analysis and reduced costs associated with data processing.

Ready or not

The issue is not with the principle of electronic filing, then - the issue is with the deadline. Concerns were sparked after it was revealed in January that some IT software companies were decidedly unready for iXBRL or - at best - had only recently released the new technology. Sage, one of the largest companies, will not release its fully functioning version before the deadline.