CFDG tackles tax office over iXBRL small charities exemption

Finance | Tania Mason | 10 Feb 2011

CFDG has asked HMRC to extend the small charities exemption from iXBRL to trading subsidiaries of these groups.

The umbrella body’s chief executive Caron Bradshaw wrote to the Permanent Secretary for Tax, Dave Hartnett, yesterday to highlight “a discrepancy” in HMRC’s recent guidance on iXBRL.

She explained that despite HMRC’s concession that charities with income of less than £6.5m can still submit their accounts in PDF format, instead of having to use iXBRL, its guidance effectively undermines this relief by stating that the exemption doesn’t apply to trading subsidiaries of charities.

Bradshaw wrote: “Consequently, small charities with trading subsidiaries will have to either purchase iXBRL software or outsource iXBRL generation for the subsidiary. This seriously undermines the relief for small charities that this exemption was originally intended to provide.”

She proposed that HMRC should extend the exemption to trading subsidiaries within small charity groups where the combined income is less than £6.5m. “This would avoid high costs to many small charities that have trading subsidiaries."

The issue and proposed solution were initially identified by specialist charity consultancy and auditing firm, Sayer Vincent.

Read the full letter here.

Directory: Charity Finance Directors' Group (CFDG) | HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC)
Who's Who: Caron Bradshaw

Comments

[Cancel] | Reply to:

Name *

Email *

Organisation

Job Title

Comments *

Verification *

* Please read our Community Standards

Close »

Community Standards

The civilsociety.co.uk community and comments board is intended as a platform for informed and civilised debate.

We hope to encourage a broad range of views, however, there are standards that we expect commentators to uphold. We reserve the right to delete or amend any comments that do not adhere to these standards.

We welcome:

Robust but respectful debate
Strongly held opinions
Intelligent relevant discussion
The sharing of relevant experiences
New participants

We will not publish:

Rude, threatening, offensive, obscene or abusive language, or links to such material
Links to commercial organisations or spam postings. The comments board is not an advertising platform
The posting of contact details for yourself or others
Comments intended for malicious purpose or mindless abuse
Comments purporting to be from another person or organisation under false pretences
Gratuitous criticism, commentary or self-promotion
Any material which breaches copyright or privacy laws, or could be considered libellous
The use of the comments board for the pursuit or extension of personal disputes

Be aware:

Views expressed on the comments board are left at users’ discretion and are in no way views held or supported by Civil Society Media
Comments left by others may not be accurate, do not rely on them as fact
You may be misunderstood - sarcasm and humour can easily be taken out of context, try to be clear

Please:

Enjoy the opportunity to express your opinion and respect the right of others to express theirs
Confine your remarks to issues rather than personalities

Together we can keep our community a polite, respectful and intelligent platform for discussion.