iXBRL: A Compliance Issue

From 1 April 2011, some charities will need to file their tax computations and accounts using iXBRL.

iXBRL stands for Inline eXtensible Business Reporting Language and is a computer language enabling the transfer of data from one computer to another. HMRC requires that all companies file their tax computations and accounts in this format, from 1 April 2011 for accounting periods ending after 31 March 2010.

This means that accounts and tax computations will need to be translated into the iXBRL format, a process referred to as tagging. Tagging of accounts can be done in a number of ways, but we expect that the most common will be:

• converting accounts prepared in Word or Excel to the new format