About the FRC Taxonomies Project

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The UK and Irish digital reporting taxonomies digitise reporting standards, enabling entities to submit regulatory filings in a machine-readable, structured format. This initiative aims to foster a technologically advanced ecosystem for exchanging financial, sustainability, and other data among preparers, data collectors, and data consumers.

The taxonomies define elements for UK-adopted IFRS Accounting Standards endorsed by the UK Endorsement Board, EU-adopted IFRS Accounting Standards, UK and Ireland accounting standards issued by the FRC, such as FRS 101 Reduced Disclosure Framework, FRS 102 The Financial Reporting Standard applicable in the UK and Republic of Ireland, FRS 103 Insurance Contracts and FRS 105 The Financial Reporting Standard applicable to the Micro‑entities Regime. The taxonomies also incorporate International Standards on Auditing (UK) issued by the FRC and International Standards on Auditing (Ireland) issued by IAASA, and legislative requirements, such as the Companies Act, the Charities Act, SECR regulation.

The FRC Taxonomy Suite also accommodates entry points for Community Interest Company Report (CIC 34) and Dormant Subsidiary Exempt Package (DSEP) accounts.

The Charities taxonomy digitises disclosure requirements for the Charities Statement of Recommended Practice (SORP) issued by the Charities SORP-making body.

Objectives of the Taxonomies Project

The over-arching objective is to provide taxonomies which enable the efficient preparation of legally compliant corporate reports in XBRL. The content of the taxonomies is derived from current UK regulations and are designed to be used by companies and entities to meet the relevant legal reporting requirements.

Separately to tags provided to meet legal requirements, the taxonomies should include tags to digitally disclose additional types of information that filers have in their paper reports. Filers may elect to tag these at their own discretion as there is no legal obligation to do so.

The objectives are all relevant and the order of them does not denote a ranking or relative importance. In devising the objectives, the needs of users and regulators are given equal weighting. It should be noted that UK regulators may have differing priorities regarding objectives for the taxonomies, however the following objectives are high level and apply to all regulators.

This means taxonomies which:

Generate quality structured data.
Clearly and accurately define the XBRL tags needed to identify specific information.
Cover financial, non-financial and narrative elements within annual and other corporate reports 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 tagging of financial statements and other key monetary and numeric data in the main body of financial statements, to ensure compliance with 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:

Very varied in content and form across companies.
Highly specialised – either in general or for the sector concerned.
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.

Principles of the Taxonomies Project

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.

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. It should be noted that some principles have greater precedence for certain regulatory requirements than others.

The following principles are high level, cover diverse responsibilities and apply to all regulators. They 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 digital reports
Proposed changes are supported by all relevant UK and Irish regulators
Reduce the burden on companies and those that prepare digital reports
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 digital reporting with emphasis on continuous improvement of quality.
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 understand issue resolution and practices in different jurisdictions and account for foreign taxonomy practice.
To assist preparers of digital reports in clearly understanding their reporting obligations.
Promote innovation in statutory audit work, corporate reporting and corporate governance.

Taxonomy Governance & Multi-Stakeholder Oversight

Taxonomy development is overseen by longstanding, multi-stakeholder governance bodies: the XBRL UK Technical Task Force, the XBRL UK Governance Committee, and the FRC Executive Committee. These Committees include staff from His Majesty's Revenue and Customs (HMRC), Companies House, Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ), the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), the Charity Commission for England and Wales (CCEW), and the Office of the Revenue Commissioners of Ireland (Irish Revenue), FRC, XBRL UK, and leading advisors.

We welcome stakeholder expertise. To register your interest in becoming a committee member, please contact the FRC Taxonomies Team at [email protected].

Membership of the XBRL UK Governance Committee

Phil FitzGerald, FRC (Chair)
Cassie McGoldrick, FCA
Christine Scott, ICAS
Henry Vaile, Companies House
James Fagan, Irish Revenue
Jennifer Guest, FRC
Kim Andrews, Charity Commission
Laura Etheridge and Lucy Johnston, DESNZ
Marshall Matthews, KPMG
Paul Smith, DBT
Philip Allen, XBRL UK
Sean Callaghan, EY
Seema Jamil-O'Neill , UK Endorsement Board
Stephen Maloney, FRC
Tim Lloydlangston, HMRC

Membership of the XBRL UK Technical Task Force

Jennifer Guest, FRC (Chair)
Adam Edgar, Arkk Solutions
Anahita Roshanfekr, Iris
Andrew Besley, Thomson Reuters
Az Khan, FCA
Carl Palfrey, Companies House
Janis Steinmann, Amana
Jess Jensen, Xero
Kim Andrews, Charity Commission
Luke Agbeko, HMRC
Nicolas Duvauchel, CoreFiling
Simon Warren, Caseware
Siobhan Wilkes, TaxCalc
Stephan van Niekerk, Ernst & Young
Thomas Price, CoreFiling