iXBRL filing comes of age with the Autumn 2010 Edition
20 October 2010
Our first fully iXBRL-enabled edition of Alphatax was released in Spring 2010. We are pleased to announce that 99.4% of all E-Filing submissions made using this edition in September were successful. We are committed to further improving our current success rate and with the release of our Alphatax UK Autumn 2010 Edition we have made significant improvements to the submission process including full offline validation of e-filing documents based on an enhanced implementation of HMRC's validation rules.
We are also pleased to announce that a number of our users have chosen to take advantage of the iXBRL filing facility in the Spring 2010 release of Alphatax in advance of the mandatory deadline. To date over 100 iXBRL files have been successfully filed with HMRC with a 100% success rate.
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iXBRL computations at the Alphatax London User Conference
21 May 2010
The Alphatax UK London User Conference 2010 at the British Museum on 12 May represented the first opportunity that a number of our users have had to see Alphatax iXBRL tagging in use. Stephen Taylor, a senior developer in the Tax Development team led a session explaining the background to iXBRL and highlighting the issues involved in manually tagging documents. Stephen explained that a combination of the advanced design of Alphatax’s tax logic and the close working relationship between our development teams and HMRC enabled TCSL to create a fully automated iXBRL tagging solution for tax computations.
Stephen led a demonstration of the automated iXBRL tagging and review process on a typical company file. He explained that Alphatax did not associate XBRL tags to fixed templates but instead associated the tags to individually identified calculation items (of which Alphatax has around 65,000). This unique approach means that Alphatax is able to automatically tag existing computations completed in previous versions of Alphatax and that Alphatax can also dynamically flex XBRL tagging to ensure that tags are always associated with the most appropriate items on a report.
Stephen explained how Alphatax data input statements had been enhanced in order to allow users to capture all the information that may be required for iXBRL filing purposes which was not included in previous Alphatax releases and gave a demonstration of newly developed XBRL review capabilities and the final iXBRL output formatted for onward submission to HMRC.
During the breaks TCSL staff were available for questioning on the details of iXBRL e-filing. We received very positive feedback during the course of the day and look forward to receiving more feedback as users begin to use the XBRL tagging mechanism released in our Spring 2010 release.
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iXBRL update for computations and returns
6 November 2009
Tax Computer Systems Limited is delighted to announce Alphatax is fully compliant with HMRC’s new mandatory e-filing standard. HMRC have confirmed that from April 2011 tax computations and supporting accounts must be filed using the new iXBRL standard and that paper submissions will no longer be accepted. We believe we are the first software provider to provide a fully automated solution covering the completion and submission of comprehensive iXBRL tax returns.
Alphatax automatically embeds all relevant XBRL tag names in the tax computation without user intervention. Accordingly the user does not need to have any knowledge or understanding of the iXBRL syntax. Furthermore, there is no requirement for the user to tag any number manually. Many organisations have expressed concerns that HMRC’s use of benchmarking and automated data mining techniques may reveal weaknesses in the data when filing under iXBRL. The Alphatax approach achieves a robust and accurate solution across organisations of any size.
Alphatax was the first software to be accredited for XML e-filing in 2003 and today Alphatax is the leading independent provider of CT e-filing submissions. With one of the highest R&D budgets in the industry TCSL is committed to being the foremost supplier of end-to-end corporate tax compliance software. From the proactive dialogue we have had with HMRC, we are confident we will continue to be the first to provide new technology, using elegant solutions that exceed the expectations of our customers.
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What is XBRL?
24 September 2009
Extensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) is a data standard designed to ensure that electronic documents can be read by computers and enables numbers contained in those documents to be automatically extracted and reported upon. XBRL uses the Extensible Markup Language (XML) syntax. HMRC have supported e-filing using the XML standard since 2002. Alphatax was the first commercial package to support this e-filing convention and has since been used to file many thousands of tax returns electronically.
The advantage of XBRL over XML is that the names of individual reporting items (‘Tags’) are defined in a taxonomy which defines the business relationship of the tags. The XBRL standard also defines the format for values with different currencies, periods and decimalisation. In March 2006, HMRC published the first corporation tax taxonomy which included around 4,500 tags. Following discussions with our development team HMRC defined 1,200 of these tags as mandatory. If a mandatory item appears in the computation then HMRC expect this to be tagged with an appropriate XBRL identity. Non mandatory items do not need to be tagged for XBRL purposes even if they appear in the computation.
The disadvantage of XBRL (and XML) is the difficulty viewing the submitted data in a human understandable form. With the original 2006 taxonomy, HMRC provided a viewer (‘Style Sheet’) of the XBRL tax computation. As everyone who has used Alphatax knows we spend considerable effort to ensure that the tax computation is highly presentable. Our current presentational format is a result of nearly twenty years of improvements and refinements requested by our users. HMRC’s style sheet was unacceptably slow and displayed the computation poorly. In addition the stylesheet computation omitted many data items presented by an Alphatax tax computation.
Accordingly, HMRC chose last year to utilise a rendering offering called inline XBRL (‘iXBRL’). iXBRL is based around the Extensible Hypertext Markup Language (‘XHTML’) format. XHTML is also part of the family of XML markup languages. Alphatax will produce XHTML output based on its existing report presentation. XHTML can be easily displayed in a web browser, such as Microsoft Internet Explorer, although the display is not as good as that provided by Alphatax reports. The XBRL tags are embedded in the XHTML version of your computation in such a manner that the browser displays the tax computation only, and ignores the XBRL tags. HMRC’s computer systems are able to extract the values denoted by the XBRL tags and analyse those values independently of the original document in order to highlight issues requiring further investigation.
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Mandatory online filing of company tax returns
13 March 2009
Important changes are being made to the filing process for Company Tax Returns. These changes are due to take effect for returns filed after 31 March 2011 and will affect all companies filing UK Company Tax Returns. It is essential that companies understand their new obligations and make appropriate plans to enable their systems for online filing.
Alphatax will be fully enabled for the new filing regime. In 2003, Tax Computer Systems was the first commercial software organisation accredited to electronically submit CT600s via the Government Gateway with the current scheme and the company intends to be the first to release software capable of submitting the full range of tax calculations using the new scheme. This is made possible by the company's excellent ongoing dialogue with HMRC and with its customer base.
Tax Computer Systems plans to release this capability later in 2009 so that users can become accustomed to the process and provide feedback prior to the mandatory deadline. Significant delays by HMRC to the completion of the new mechanism have prevented the company from making the required changes in time for the Alphatax UK Spring 2009 Edition.
Download a brief guide to the new online filing regime or click here to see the HMRC guidance.
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