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18 Nov 2011
EACH SET of corporate tax returns filed to HM Revenue & Customs in new technology format could add up to eight hours per client.
A webseminar held by ICAEW's IT Faculty in association with software suppliers Thomson Reuters found a third of accountants estimate each set of accountants filed in iXBRL format will take between two and eight hours extra.
In April this year HMRC required all corporate tax returns to be filed in new tax technology iXBRL.
Nearly half claimed filings would now take between 10mins and two hours longer.
Despite the additional workload 95% said they had not employed additional staff to prepare and review future tax filings.
"This research explores how iXBRL is impacting the profession and provides the first, in-depth look at the amount of additional time accountants believe will be needed to produce compliant accounts," said Tom Walsh, (pictured) senior vice president and managing director, EMEA, the Tax & Accounting business of Thomson Reuters.
"The effect on existing workloads is significant at a time when businesses are not looking to hire new staff."
Accountants in both business and practice are also waiting until the eleventh hour to decide on what software to use to file their corporate tax returns.
Although more than half of all filings are made between December and March, a third of respondents said they have yet to decide which software to use.
Of those that have filed in iXBRL 67% said they found the "transition difficult".
About 200 accountants were surveyed with 54% working in business and the rest in practice.
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Briefings
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Visitor comments Add your comment
Amazing Figures
To be clear BTCSoftware produce iXBRL ready CT software. That said none of our users report any such figure, if they did it would mean we'd have done something very wrong indeed. Most say they notice no real difference!
Posted by: Andrew Ross of BTCSoftware, 18 Nov 2011 | 12:08
Something must be badly wrong
We use CCH software and although there were some nasty bugs in the first few weeks, the extra work now is a matter of minutes, not hours. I suspect the 'two hours plus' quoted must have been right at the beginning of the implementation.
Posted by: Mike Tombs, 18 Nov 2011 | 17:18
They must have the wrong software!
Clearly they should be using VT Final Accounts and a good tax return product such as Taxcalc or BTC. We haven't noticed any time increase at all!
Posted by: Connie, 18 Nov 2011 | 18:13
another survey....
DataTracks and Accounting Web also conducted a similar survey, also with 200 respondents. Our key findings were:
- In terms of software solutions, three quarters use accounts production, with the balance split evenly between tagging software and the HMRC tool.
- 60% rated their software solution with less than 70% satisfaction. The result was pretty constant across all three software options.
- 60% believe the additional costs are greater than £50 per return, with 30% experiencing greater than £150 per return. Much of this is review and correction time.
- 22% have significant concerns about the accuracy of the output.
- 21% have difficulty in recovering the additional internal costs from clients.
- 20% are concerned about iXBRL using too much internal time, and much this was review and correction of the outpout from software.
- 17% are concerned about the sustanability of their current solution choice.
Whilst outsourcuing is not appropriate for all cases, DataTracks is finding increasing numbers reassessing their initial bias aganist outsourcing, in the light of these concerns. We are sure that specialist managed taggiing services will form an increasingly important part of the overall solution set as the space matures.
Posted by: Will Mathieson, 19 Nov 2011 | 08:19
HMR&C CT software
I started to use the Revenue CT software and it did take between 3 hrs or 5 if ,and Iit usualy did, have problems!
I moved over to proprietory software and it now works ok most of the time ...not always!!
Posted by: Red Riding Hood, 20 Nov 2011 | 09:38