Written by Ashley Goldsmith, Product Manager (Accounts Production)
Just two years after the previous update, the FRC has announced that they will be introducing a new suite of taxonomies for use in 2021.
The suite provides an update for all taxonomies - with the exception of the Irish extension which remains as per the 2019 version. There are multiple additions to the taxonomies – several are a direct consequence of the pandemic and the additional financial reporting which is now required.
Key changes to the 2021 suite:
• Covid issues – additional income-related tags have been added to cover the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme. Other Covid-related grants have also been added.
• Off-payroll working – new tags are added to cater for revenue received from off-payroll working and off-payroll working expenses.
• Pay ratio regulations – All reporting requirements set out in SI ‘The Companies (Miscellaneous Reporting) Regulations 2018’ regarding pay ratio information are now covered by the taxonomy.
• SECR reporting – The SECR taxonomy introduced in 2019 supersedes the greenhouse gas emissions reporting items present in the Directors’ report.
When is the new taxonomy effective from?
Companies House are scheduled to have enabled the 2021 taxonomies by April 2021. HMRC will do likewise by 21st July 2021. They will also be providing a new version of the DPL taxonomy by then.
The FRC have stated that for sets of Accounts which include the new taxonomy components listed above, the 2021 taxonomy should be used as soon as possible.
What about partially tagged files?
Companies House explicitly state that they will continue to support the 3 most recently released versions of each taxonomy – so the 2021, 2019 and 2018 versions will continue to be accepted until such time as another update is released. The 2014 taxonomy however will cease to be accepted from 1 April 2021.
When will CaseWare include the new Taxonomies?
Work has already commenced on implementing the new taxonomies and updating the 2019 versions to become the “older taxonomy” version. We plan to offer the same support for the preceding version of the taxonomy so that for the next year, any Accounts which are partially tagged under the 2019 version can be finalised using that version and then the 2021 taxonomy can be used in the following year. For new engagements the 2021 taxonomy will become the default selection.
For tagged items common to both taxonomies, the auto-tagging will continue to work as it did with the previous taxonomy versions. Where applicable, additional content will also be pre-tagged for these newly available taxonomy elements.
The update will be made available to CaseWare users this summer