COM132001 - Returns / notices: return handling: introduction

A company must file its company tax return electronically through CT Online for any AP ending on or after 1 April 2010. The accounts and computations elements of the return must be filed with iXBRL (Word 28KB) (inline Extensible Business Reporting Language) tagging, which is an IT standard designed for business financial reporting. The exceptions to this requirement are as follows:

• Companies that are run entirely by individuals who are practising members of a religious society or order whose beliefs are incompatible with the use of electronic communications
• Insolvent companies within a formal administration or winding up procedure

• Unincorporated charities, clubs and societies can choose to file their accounts in either iXBRL or PDF (Word 27KB) format, but they must file their return online and submit their computations in iXBRL format
• Any computation forming part of a charity’s company tax return must be in iXBRL format. However, no computation is required at all where the CT600E (Charities and Community Amateur Sports Clubs) supplementary page of the return is completed and confirms

• • That all income and gains of the charity are exempt from tax and
  • That they have been or will be applied for charitable purposes

• The group accounts of Group companies do not need to be iXBRL tagged
• Where companies use an accounting standard which has a taxonomy (a classification system) that is not supported by CT Online (for example some overseas companies trading through a branch or agency in the UK), we will accept accounts in PDF format

You view online returns using the CT View Returns application. Using this application, you see in the internal portal the items that have been submitted by the company or agent. This is normally made up of

• The CT600 company return form
• The accounts
• The computations
• Any supplementary pages required
• Any other attachment submitted to give further information

There was an Extra Statutory Concession (ESC B46) that gave extra time to deliver paper to take account of postal delays and delays in manually processing large numbers of returns. Although the concession also applied to online returns, it ended on 31 March 2011 and no concessionary time is now given for the submission of returns.

Handling returns refers to dealing with cases that have been entered on work lists for manual intervention to ensure the successful processing of online returns and recording self assessments where COTAX has been unable to deal with them automatically. Rarely, it also relates to the receipt of a paper return.