XBRL in the UK Peter Calvert XBRL European Technical Meeting 5 October 2006

Overview  Projects in the UK –Companies House - regulator which receives company accounts –Tax authority - HMRC  XBRL to be mandatory in UK for all company account and tax reporting after March 2010

Types of UK Reporting  UK GAAP – Some 2.3 million unlisted companies  IFRS – about 2,500 listed companies  HMRC Tax Computations  Other additional reporting -e.g. FSA

Nature of UK reporting  No fixed format or content  Accounts of most companies vary considerably in content and layout  Only some of the smallest companies follow a fairly predictable format –However, this is still a large number of companies

Consequences  Large and complex GAAP taxonomy  Need to support company extensions  Need to support varying formats => requirements for rendering  Various issues arise with calculations, handling of text etc.

Plans in the UK  Start with small companies, then move to more complex cases.  Companies House project for XBRL filing by audit exempt companies  HMRC tax computations and accounts for audit exempt companies  Expand to larger companies

Taxonomy development  Full UK GAAP taxonomy  Extend for small companies  HMRC tax computations taxonomy  (Use stylesheets for rendering)  Revise full UK GAAP taxonomy –Issue to software vendors for feedback and implementation

Companies House small company project  Went live in December 2005  Filing by accounting software packages and by web interface  About 40,000 accounts filed so far  Significant increase in quality and saving of resources

Companies House implementation Companies House Taxonomy Schema Document (approx. 60 elements) uk-gaap-ae Linkbases uk-gaap-pt Taxonomy Schema Document (over 3,000 elements) Label Linkbase Reference Linkbase Taxonomy Schema Document uk-gcd Label Linkbase XBRL Instance Document

HMRC, Next Steps and UK GAAP  HMRC filing of tax computations just gone live  Revision of small companies extension => broader range of smaller company filing in early 2007  Revision of UK GAAP taxonomy now in final stages

Revision of UK GAAP taxonomy and expansion of XBRL filing  Revised version incorporates dimensions (and new GCD)  Now under internal review  Release to accounting software companies in November  Important implementation stage: challenge for companies and XBRL

Issues - Dimensions  Important addition - much more effective representation of data  Reduction in number of elements  BUT complex to implement –Statistics: 34 dimensions, 22 hypercubes –Use of inheritance to simplify extension –Feedback from review and early implementation

Issues - Rendering  Standard mechanism to make instances readable by humans  Required by data providers for efficient instance creation and assurance  Needed by regulators for efficient consumption and publication of data

Other Issues (1)  Text: what text to represent and at what level of granularity  Versioning: –Phased approach –Standard way of documenting typical changes –Human commentary –We should limit initial expectations

Other Issues (2)  Formulae –Not a high priority for the UK –Accept limitations of calculations –Practical application and extensibility  GCD –Use and reaction so far –Duplicate activity and loss of interoperability –Effort required - put on agenda for future consideration

SUMMARY OF XBRL IN THE UK  Successful implementation for fixed format and simple accounts  Now face challenge of implementing for large, variable format accounts with company extensions  Deadlines; requirements for international deliverables