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XBRL FRC Taxonomies

News and Updates

The 2022 suite of FRC Taxonomies has been issued on 8 October 2021.

The suite is updated for all FRC taxonomies. The amendments are summarized as follows, but for more detail please refer to the Design and Guides sections of this page.  Key information documents are produced for all the taxonomies.

Key changes to the 2022 suite
The SECR taxonomy containing the TCFD disclosures has been incorporated into the main body of the FRC suite, as requested by software houses to facilitate the possibility of incorporating SECR tagging in products for tagging for accounting, so that more entities can be encouraged to take up supplying this information digitally. All items have migrated into the ‘direp’ (Directors’ Report) namespace when imported into the FRC suite.

The SECR and Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) tags are now found in all the Directors’ Report section of the FRC Taxonomies (except for the Irish extensions and UKSEF). 

With a view to embracing the ability to tag more detailed TCFD disclosures, even though they are not mandatory, the SECR Taxonomy has had its TCFD disclosures augmented to reflect expected enhanced disclosures from companies eager to provide information to investors.  The original four reporting concepts have been made into headings with the greater detail contained in child tags relating to the headings.

The UKSEF imports the most up-to-date version of the ESEF and can be used with tags from the rest of the FRC taxonomies suite (including tags for the Directors Report, SECR and TCFD disclosures) for UK reporting purposes to Companies House and FCA.   It is a UK version of the ESEF Taxonomy and overseas entities wishing to file with Companies House need to use the UKSEF to file, since it makes available the extra tags needed to file in the UK.  Companies filing to the FCA can also use the UKSEF (also see the FRC and FCA joint letter to CEOs on structured reporting).  A UKSEF guide for taggers and developers is available.  The guide provides helpful guidance in relation to developing products for filing in the UK with the UKSEF and for those tagging with the UKSEF.  This guide is necessary, since the ESEF rules and guidance are not aimed at UK filers and taggers.

The 2022 version of the UKSEF is more flexible and interchangeable with the other taxonomies in the FRC suite and, a different architecture allows for any future changes that may need to be made to the UKSEF, depending on future UK legislative changes and requirements.

The FRC taxonomies now support a Welsh label linkbase, to enable those that wish to browse the taxonomies and/or report in the Welsh language to be able to do so.

HMRC’s Detailed Profit & Loss (DPL) taxonomy extension is now part of the Directors’ Report.

  • The DPL has been incorporated as a section within each of the current entry points, not separately as its own entry point.
  • An additional concept has been added (for the UK only) for declaring that one has included a DPL statement.

Digitally enabling Gender Pay Gap reporting
Tags for Gender Pay Gap reporting have been included in the Directors Report for those who wish to tag these concepts. 

Digital enabling of Academy reporting
The charitable status of Academy Trusts is that they are charitable companies but are exempt from registration with CCEW.  The Department for Education (DfE) is Principal Regulator.
Academies report as charities under the Charities SORP (FRS102), and the Charity Commission is supportive of a tag for Academies to be inserted in the Charity Accounts Taxonomy to enable Academies to be able to digitally report.

An ‘Academy trust’ is the member name for Legal Form of Entity dimension and it has been placed high up in the Charities hierarchy so that it is obvious to an Academy to select the tag.

Who should use this suite?
The 2022 suite represents the most up-to-date version of the FRC Taxonomies and as such should be used to comply with HMRC requirements to fully tag.  The suite has been designed with full tagging in mind.  Accounts should be fully tagged, except for consolidated UKSEF data where regulations permit minimum tagging. Filers to HMRC and Companies House should use the most-up-to-date version where possible. 

It is expected that Companies House will have enabled this suite by 1 April 2022 and the FCA will have enabled the suite by 31 December 2021. The Charity Accounts Taxonomy may be used by all charities preparing accounts in accordance with the Charities FRS 102 SORP and is mandatory for large charities with income over £6.5m filing with HMRC.

Supporting Material

Mapping documents detailing all the changes to the suite since the 2021 version (2019 in the case of the Irish extensions) and the standard to which the changes relate can be found below:

Mapping: Charities 2022 (Excel) Charities 2022 (Excel)

Mapping: FRS 101 2022 (Excel) Mapping: UK FRS 101 2022 (Excel)

Mapping: FRS 102 2022 (Excel) Mapping: UK FRS 102 2022 (Excel)

Mapping: IFRS 2022 (Excel) Mapping: UK IFRS 2022 (Excel)

Mapping: Irish FRS 101 (Excel) Mapping: Ireland FRS 101 2022 (Excel)

Mapping: Irish FRC 102 (Excel) Mapping: Ireland FRS 102 2022 (Excel)

Mapping: Irish IFRS 2022 (Excel) Mapping: Ireland IFRS 2022 (Excel)

The mapping documents are designed to enable software houses to easily identify the changes. Four colours are used with red denoting a deletion, green an addition, yellow a change to an existing line, and orange to indicate deprecated items.  Two new columns have been added to the start of each sheet to provide more information in relation to the change. The first column ‘Description of Change’ provides a brief but informative description of the nature of the changes. The second column ‘Ancestry Change’ indicates that a concept has moved within the current hierarchy.

Developer and Tagging guides are available in the section: Design and Guides. The guides are applicable for all published versions of the FRC taxonomies. A UKSEF guide is also available, as is a Design guide which sets out the design principles behind the FRC Taxonomies. FRC Consistency Checks and Joint Filing Common Validation Checks are available in the section: Consistency Checks.

Irish Extension Taxonomy

An Irish extension of the 2022 taxonomy suite was released by the FRC on 8 October 2021 for the electronic tagging of Irish accounts to support the Irish Revenue Commissioners’ requirement for iXBRL financial statements as part of the Corporation Tax return. Further information on the Irish Extension Taxonomy, including older versions, can be found in the ‘XBRL Taxonomies Irish Extension’ section below.

Irish Extension Taxonomy 2022 

Charity Accounts Taxonomy

An updated version of the Charity taxonomy was released by the FRC and the Charity Commission (CCEW) on 8 October 2021 for the electronic tagging of charity accounts to support the CCEW objectives of enhancing the quality and accessibility of financial reporting for Charities in the UK and Northern Ireland. Those reporters not early adopting the amended FRS 102 standard who wish to continue to report using the previous version of the charity taxonomies, may continue to do so. The iXBRL accounts tagging convention (Charity “taxonomy”) has been updated in line with the Charities SORP (FRS 102) and the FRC’s financial reporting standard FRS 102.
 
The taxonomy will be used when tagging charity accounts for electronic filing and for other analytical purposes. Electronic tagging helps users of financial information to extract relevant information from charity reports and analyse it more efficiently.

Charities 2022 Taxonomies 2022 (Zip File)

Current Taxonomies

The following versions of the FRC Taxonomies are available to download:

The 2022 Taxonomy suite version 1.0.0 (2022) (Zip File)
The 2022 UKSEF 1.0.0 (2022) (zip file)
The 2021 Taxonomy suite version 1.0.0 (2021) (zip file)
The 2021 SECR Taxonomy 1.1.0 (2021) (zip file)
The 2021 UKSEF Taxonomy 1.1.0 (2021) (zip file)

The 2022 suite relates to the FRC’s Taxonomies: UK IFRS, FRS 101, FRS 102, UKSEF, Irish Extensions and Charities and contains taxonomy documentation (supporting documents, key information sheets and release notes).  The 2022 suite of FRC Taxonomies was issued on 8 October 2021.  For more information on the release please refer to the News and Updates section of this page.

The 2021 suite relates to the FRC’s Taxonomies: UK IFRS, FRS 101, FRS 102, SECR, UKSEF and Charities and contains taxonomy documentation (supporting documents, key information sheets and release notes).  The 2021 suite of FRC Taxonomies was issued on 29 September 2020.

The amendments to the 2021 suite are summarized as follows, but for more detail please refer to the Design and Guides sections of this page.  Key information documents are produced for all the taxonomies.

Supporting Material

Mapping documents detailing all the changes to the 2021 suite since the 2019 version and the standard to which the changes relate can be found:

Mapping: Charities 2021 (Excel)
Mapping: FRS 101 2021 (Excel)
Mapping: FRS 102 2021 (Excel)
Mapping: IFRS 2021 (Excel)
Mapping: UKSEF 2021 (Excel)

Key changes to the 2022 suite
This information can be found in the News and Updates section of this page.
 
Key changes to the 2021 suite
As part of continued efforts to increase digital enablement of accounts, we have enabled revised accounts. Disruption arising from the COVID pandemic has increased the need for this facility and highlighted the extent of the benefit that this will bring.

Covid Issues: additional income-related tags to cover the Coronavirus Jobs Retention Scheme (CJRS) and other Covid-related grants have been added.

Off Payroll Working: additional tags have been added to cover revenue from off payroll working and off payroll working expenses. These new tags have been added for all entry-points (FRS 101, FRS 102, UK IFRS and Charities).

Pay Ratio Regulations: The Statutory Instrument ‘The Companies (Miscellaneous Reporting) Regulations 2018’ sets out requirements for the reporting of pay ratio information in the Directors’ Remuneration Report. All entry-points have been amended to cover these requirements.

SECR Reporting:  The SECR Taxonomy introduced in 2019 supersedes the greenhouse gas emissions reporting items present in the Directors’ Report. These tags have been removed (not deprecated, to avoid confusion with the SECR reporting requirements).

In addition, SECR reporting is an additional requirement for (large) companies who may choose to report using UK SEF. Consequently, the SECR taxonomy has been incorporated into the UKSEF taxonomy extension for the convenience of filers. This avoids the complication of additional combined entry-points.

Who should use this suite?

The 2021 suite represents the penultimate version of the FRC Taxonomies and as such can be used to comply with HMRC requirements to fully tag.  The suite has been designed with full tagging in mind.  Accounts should be fully tagged, except for consolidated UKSEF data where regulations permit minimum tagging. Filers to Companies House should use the most up-to-date version (2022 suite) where possible. Companies House and HMRC enabled the suite in July 2021. 

Historical Taxonomies

The 2019 Taxonomy suite Version 1.1.0 (2019)
The 2018 Taxonomy suite Version 1.0.0 (2018)
The 2014 Taxonomy suite Version 2.1.0 (2014)
The 2019 SECR Taxonomy Version 1.0.0 (2019)

The 2019 Taxonomy suite
The suite was been designed with full tagging in mind. Accounts should be fully tagged.
 
Who should use the 2019 suite?
This suite does not form part of the current version of the FRC taxonomies in use and as such should only be used for reporting for historical accounts.  If this suite is used for current reporting full tagging will not be possible and reporting will not be aligned with current HMRC and Companies House reporting requirements. Please refer to the HMRC Accepted Taxonomies page and Companies House Accepted Taxonomies page.

The 2014 Taxonomy Suite
Entities should not be using this suite because in doing so you will not be able to comply with the HMRC requirement to fully tag.  Companies House do not accept current submissions using this suite. This taxonomy suite should not be used on or after 1 January 2019. Please refer to the HMRC Accepted Taxonomies page and Companies House Accepted Taxonomies page.

Contact the XBRL Project Director at XBRL@frc.org.uk


 

 

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The over-arching objective is to provide taxonomies which enable the efficient conversion of corporate reporting into XBRL reports and reflect current UK regulations and other frameworks. 
 
This means taxonomies which:

  • Clearly and accurately define the XBRL tags needed to identify specific information. 

  • Cover the data in financial statements which is useful for analysis, comparison, or review by existing and potential consumers of XBRL reports. 

  • Are easy and efficient to use. 

  • Provide clear and consistent tagged information which can be used effectively by consumers of XBRL information. 

 
The taxonomies should, as far as is practical:

  • Be in line with technology available in the marketplace and with relevant regulatory scope and remit.

  • Enable complete tagging of the main financial statements and other key monetary and numeric data in the main body of financial statements, where required by regulations. 

  • Facilitate tagging, for the purposes of identification, of all textual information which is important to the interpretation and meaning of an annual report and accounts.  This means high-level tagging to indicate the presence and scope of particular textual statements, but not necessarily granular tagging of the detailed components of such statements. 

  • Play a role in encouraging the creation of further taxonomies and the embedding of a digital focus for FRC core policy areas through a combination of innovation, outreach, promotion, and education activities.

 
It is not practical to define tags to cover every eventuality or item which may be reported in annual reports.  However, appropriate techniques, such as the use of analysis tags, enable comprehensive tagging of most financial schedules in accounts without requiring a particularly large number of tags in the taxonomies. 
 
Despite the general aims, particular areas of reporting may not be in scope for detailed tagging where these are:
 
a)         Very varied in content and form across companies. 
b)         Highly specialised – either in general or for the sector concerned. 
c)         Not expected to be a high priority for analysis by likely users of accounts. 
 
Areas of reporting have been excluded from detailed tagging if they meet at least two of these criteria.
 
Many design features of the FRC taxonomies have stood the test of time.  Unnecessary change would have an adverse effect on familiarity and efficiency and would serve to increase cost and risk. 

It is desirable that any new pronouncements of standards and regulations should specify that digital reporting should be facilitated, with the directional aim of  regulations, standards and taxonomies being provided simultaneously.
 
Accordingly, the following principles are intended to help the decision-making process when changes are requested to the FRC Taxonomies and should be applied before putting forward any new proposed taxonomy work and, to establish the order of priority of work:
           

  • Promote brevity, comprehensibility and usefulness in accounts and annual reports

  • Proposed changes are supported by all relevant regulators UK and Irish regulators

  • Reduce the burden on companies and those that prepare digital financial reporting

  • Reduce the burden on Government (UK and Irish regulators)

  • Provide value for money in the public interest & better outcomes for all stakeholders

  • Contribute to efforts to tackle economic crime

  • Contribute to achievement, measurement, validation, or enforcement of Government objectives

  • To maintain high standards of financial reporting and improve the quality of digital reporting

  • To increase transparency

  • To lead and influence internationally in digital reporting and simultaneously have regard for the need for comparability that users need to make effective decision making.

  • To assist preparers of the financial statements in clearly understanding their reporting obligations.

 
The principles are all relevant and the order of them does not denote a ranking or relative importance.  In devising the principles, the needs of users and regulators are given equal weighting. 

An Irish extension of the 2022 taxonomy suite was released by the FRC on 8 October 2021 for the electronic tagging of Irish accounts to support the Irish Revenue Commissioners’ requirement for iXBRL financial statements as part of the Corporation Tax return. The Irish extension aims to bridge the financial reporting differences between the UK and Ireland and users are invited to contact j.guest@frc.org.uk if they note any issues with the extension. In addition, the extension includes the Detailed Profit and Loss within each of the entry points for FRS 101, FRS 102 and EU IFRS, which will allow users to tag a Detailed Profit and Loss account and provide values for the mandatory items required in submissions to the Irish Revenue Commissioners.
 
The Irish Revenue Commissioners expect to accept submissions using the Irish extension from 1 April 2022. The Irish Revenue Commissioners’ will update their iXBRL page to reflect this in due course.


Irish Extension Taxonomy 2022 (zip file)

Irish Extension Taxonomy 2019 (zip file)

 

Associated documents

The FRC Taxonomies follow a similar approach in content, design and style to the existing UK GAAP and IFRS taxonomies, published by the FRC, that are currently used by UK organisations in submitting their accounts in iXBRL format. The taxonomies contain design improvements which should allow easier, fuller and more accurate tagging of accounts data in iXBRL. Their content has been carefully developed to reflect expected reporting under the relevant standards. Read or download a Developers Guide (PDF), Tagging Guide(PDF) and Accounts Taxonomies Design Guide (PDF) and UKSEF Guide.

The taxonomies have been developed by a project team at the FRC with guidance from a technical task force and under the oversight of a Governance Committee which includes staff from leading advisors, BEIS, HMRC, Companies House, Charity Commission and the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales, as well as the FRC. XBRL UK has also been involved.

Whilst the consultation is now closed, Yeti is open for comments on any issues regarding the 2022 taxonomies suite. Evidence of issues which arise with use of the FRC taxonomies is of interest to the FRC and we encourage responses either via Yeti (https://uk-taxonomies-tdp.corefiling.com/yeti/resources/yeti-gwt/Yeti.jsp) or emailed to j.guest@frc.org.uk.

A set of Consistency Checks documents that will aid developers and preparers in creating checks on summation and consistent tagging of accounts are available here (Zip file).

Consultation and Feedback documents SECR Taxonomy
 
A draft Energy & Carbon Reporting (SECR) Taxonomy was released for consultation over the summer 2019. It was a proposed addition to the FRC Taxonomies suite to reflect the new reporting requirements for energy and carbon data introduced on 1st April 2019. The taxonomy is standalone to enable it to be used with other accounting taxonomies in the FRC taxonomy suite.
The SECR Taxonomy suite was released on Yeti for consultation and closed on 30th September. You can see the Consultation here - https://uk-taxonomies-tdp.corefiling.com/yeti
 
The 2019 Taxonomy suite
 
The 2019 suite was subject to a consultation and a Feedback statement (PDF).

The 2018 Taxonomy suite
 
The 2018 taxonomy suite released on 18 December 2017 reflects the Triennial Review amendments made to UK GAAP Financial Reporting Standards on 14 December 2017. These amendments were effective for years commencing on or after 1 January 2019.

The suite reflects IFRS standards endorsed by the EU as of December 2017, except for IFRSs 9,15 and 16.

The Charities Taxonomies 
 
Charities 2019 Taxonomy (zip file)
Press release 
Charity Commission press release
Feedback Statement (PDF)
Consultation: XBRL Accounts Taxonomies

The original consultation on the extant taxonomies closed on 8 July 2014. The comment letter responses which the FRC received can be found here. 

  • Phil FitzGerald, FRC (Chair)
  • Alison Rees, Companies House
  • David Lydford-Smith, ICAEW
  • Gemma Johnson, BEIS
  • James Fagan, Irish Revenue
  • Jennifer Guest, FRC
  • Jon Rowden, PwC
  • Kim Andrews, Charity Commission
  • Leslie Bullock, FCA
  • Marshall Matthews, KPMG
  • Paul Smith, BEIS
  • Philip Allen, XBRL UK
  • Robert Stenhouse, Deloitte
  • Rosana Mircovic, BEIS
  • Sean Callaghan, EY
  • Seema Jamil-O'Neill, UK Endorsement Board
  • Tim Lloyd Langston, HMRC
  • Jennifer Guest, FRC (Chair)
  • Andrew Besley, Thomson Reuters
  • Anthony Burgis, FCA
  • Ayaz Mahmood, Sage
  • Carl Palfrey, Companies House
  • Christopher Mills, CoreFiling
  • Janis Steinmann, Amana
  • Kashi Booluck, PwC
  • Kim Andrews, Charity Commission
  • Mark Warhaugh, HMRC
  • Mohamed Mukith, IRIS Software Group
  • Nicolas Duvauchel, CoreFiling
  • Olivier Cornet, Invoke Software Ltd
  • Simon Warren, Caseware
  • Siobhan Wilkes, TaxCalc
  • Stephan van Niekerk, Ernst & Young

Two white papers on the successful use of XBRL in the UK and on Inline XBRL have been published on xbrl.org.uk. These are an important means of explaining the benefits of the UK approach and encouraging efficient use of XBRL in other projects.  

Accounting and Reporting Policy