iXLBR

[xoggoth]

Nice to see HMRC continue to find new ways to waste our time and money. Apart from all the other bugs and stupidities, now you can't just add accounts or computations as PDF in their submission software you have to type it all in again or pay to get it converted to iXLBR. But what is all the problem in converting from Excel or Word? Why are converters so expensive? Why is one being charged £80+ a time?

iXLBR is just an XML file where certain critical data, turnover etc, has to be tagged, so interest say becomes something like (US example):

<ix:nonFraction contextRef="FY07d" decimals="0"
format="ixt:numcommadot" name="iascf:InterestIncome" scale="3"
unitRef="GBP">595</ix:nonFraction>

Should be easy to produce a report from excel using VBA if only one could find examples of HMRC accounts/computation files or some adequate documentation. Am I missing something or are we being ripped off here?

[doodab]

I presume you have looked at http://www.xbrl.org/Home/ and it is specifically the IR usage that's giving you a headache?

It does sound a bit like their usual "standard accounting practice" catch all for things they can't be bothered to explain.

Edit: is this any help?

http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/ct/ct-online/taxonomy.htm

http://www.xbrl.org/uk/TechGuidance/

[xoggoth]

Seen most of those but it would take a major project of weeks or months to do anything from them. I don't want to write a commercial application to cope with every possibility, just convert my own data.

For a small company a CT calculation is normally profit+depreciation-capital allowances, apportion result by fiscal years, multipy each by rate, add - about 18 lines of real data. If I could find an example I could knock that out in excel VBA in a morning.

Like lot of IT things really, sometimes you need to really understand a subject, as for a contract, and sometimes you just need to do some small task and it easy to just bang stuff together if you can find an example.

[xoggoth]

Found a few things. Apparently HMRC will accept fairly crappy stuff for 2 years so that is what they will get. Any way of encoding anthrax into iXBRL?

iXBRL is basically just HTML with some taggy bits in it. Computations summit like this I reckon:

http://www.xoggoth.org/temp/mycomp.html

[xoggoth]

Like trying to write in a language for which the syntax has never been published. If there is any list of items needing tagging plus name and format of tag I can't find it. iXBRL is the best proof of the existence of the Illuminati ever.