There's a superb Monty Python sketch called "How to do it", in which an overly jovial and rather creepy bunch of adults teach you how to do things such as how to rid the world of all known diseases ("first of all become a doctor and discover a marvellous cure for something, and then, when the medical profession really starts to take notice of you, you can jolly well tell them what to do and make sure they get everything right so there'll never be any diseases ever again").  It just goes to show - even Blue Peter has never been beyond parody.

And HMRC has now published a guide to iXBRL which is in the "How to do it" mould (thanks ICAEW Tax Faculty for the heads up).  Clumsily entitled "XBRL - when to tag, how to tag, what to tag", it's really pretty unhelpful to all but those who are completely ignorant of the iXBRL project.  For example, it sets out the main options for preparers - buy commercial software, instruct a tax agent to help you, prepare your accounts in Word or Excel and convert them, or outsource iXBRL conversion.  This is as useful as teaching the flute by telling someone to blow in one end and waggle their fingers at the other.  The whole problem with iXBRL is that too many companies will instruct their agents to do the conversion, leaving them totally swamped and unable to cope.  HMRC's guide doesn't deal with this issue.

It does, however, inform readers gleefully that there are 6,320 tags in the full list of UK GAAP tags and 4,549 tags in the corporation tax computational list.   This sounds like an astoundingly high number for the smallest companies to be dealing with.  Even the minimum tagging list of 1,253 items, which must be used if the accounts contain them, seems much too long for companies to deal with.

Worst of all, the six-page booklet achieves its brevity by failing to deliver the promise in its title.  It doesn't tell you how to tag in a practical way, it just points you towards a long list of tags.  While it might be more sensible to expect accountants and other tax agents to take the strain, this guide doesn't explain just how they're expected to do that.

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Filed under: Taxation, Technology with tags hmrc, icaew, monty python, uk gaap, xbrl