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iXBRL furore: Fun while it lasted

11th Feb 2011
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John Stokdyk surveys the wrecked hopes of those who wanted to delay the mandatory use of iXBRL and draws a couple of lessons from the past week's controversy.

With one short letter Treasury minister David Gauke quashed the last hopes of the accountancy bodies hoping to delay the transition to mandatory iXBRL efiling.

Software contacts such as Digita founder Jerry Rihll shook my initial scepticism that the delay lobby stood a chance, and the voting patterns in AccountingWEB’s iXBRL poll reflected the profession’s underlying ambivalence. The first wave of voters - who we can assume were the most well informed - voted 57% in favour of sticking to the 1 April deadline. By the end of last week, this figure slipped to 51%, almost exactly matching Jerry’s 50:50 odds.

But as the number of respondents grew, the percentage continued to fall, ending at 39%. Worryingly, 6% of our respondents were still wondering what the fuss was all about.

The will he/won’t he suspense proved futile in the end and only depressed those who are not prepared yet, as dashed hopes are harder to cope with than inevitable doom. On the plus side, the episode succeeded in waking more people up to the challenge iXBRL efiling poses.

Even at this late stage I was surprised at the ill-informed rumours being circulated by people who should know better. The last-minute call for a delay wasn’t orchestrated by Sage. Anyone who’s ever tried to get a consistent answer out of six tax and accountancy bodies will know that even mighty Sage doesn’t have the power to do that.

With the Treasury in full support, HMRC is moving to fill the information vacuum with a briefing document explaining what to do during the transaction if your software isn’t ready or you are struggling to tag your accounts for other reasons. In spite of their scepticism about the tax department’s ability to cope with the additional workload, the tax bodies will get over their disappointment and work with HMRC on set of more detailed Q&As covering the transition.

For our part, AccountingWEB.co.uk has opened an online discussion group to continue the XBRL/iXBRL conversations and support the much-needed effort to educate the wider profession. Come and join us!

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