IRIS Summer 2022 full features v22.2
Overview
The IRIS Accountancy Suite Summer release version 22.2 includes all legislative and security updates to ensure your ongoing compliance, including the return of marginal relief for Corporation Tax, an increase in rates for creative tax credits, updates to the Academy Account formats and an update to TLS to improve the overall security of the product.
The release also includes some great new features including further enhancements to the MTD functionality for those taking part in the HMRC Pilot, additional drilldown capability in the SmartTax live tax calculation and a new variant of the Accountants’ report removing any reference to a particular accountancy body.
IRIS Accounts Production
2018 Taxonomy Retirement 1st August 2022
Following the recent retirement of the 2018 Taxonomy (1st August 2022), as part of this release when producing accounts that have historically used this Taxonomy, we have adjusted the software to apply the latest Taxonomy to unfinalized sets of accounts irrespective of accounting periods.
Prior to this release if you tried to electronically file accounts using the 2018 Taxonomy, Companies House and HMRC would reject these accounts. After installation, if you do encounter this, please unfinalized and regenerate the iXBRL accounts and the software will apply the latest appropriate permitted Taxonomy.
Prior to the application of the latest Taxonomy the software will also offer the option to automatically carry forward items that you have historically tagged manually, saving you considerable time in having to re-tag.
Academies Accounts Direction 2021 to 2022
General update
Updates have been made to Academy Account formats, to accommodate the recently released Academies Accounts Direction 2021 to 2022 for accounting periods to 31 August 2022. Appropriate changes have been made to the reference date to reflect in the statement of trustee’s responsibilities, audit report, report of regularity and accounting policies note for the basis of preparation. This continues our commitment to bringing the latest compliance.
Governance statement update – Conflicts of Interest
Within the Governance statement we have introduced a new free form data screen to allow the disclosure of Conflicts of interest. This can be found in the Governance Statement, Governance section of the data screens entitled Conflicts of Interest.
Statement on Regularity, Priority and Compliance
We have updated the standard paragraphs to replace the historic reference to Academies Financial Handbook to the up to date Academy Trust Handbook where it is appropriate.
SOFA – Charitable Activity, Teaching School Hub
Within the Charitable Activates section we have renamed the existing Teaching schools Charitable Activity to be called Teaching school Hub. We have updated the SOFA to include a new separate income and expenditure section for Teaching school hub. A breakdown of the income line will be detailed within the note titled Funding for the academy’s charitable activities.
If there is no Teaching school hub income the title of the note will be displayed as Academies Educations Operations. Similarly, if there is Teaching school hub expenditure the expenditure line will be supported within the note titled Charitable activities providing additional disclosure as required.
Related Party Transactions – Trustees’ remuneration and expenses
We have introduced a ‘new sections‘ data screens to allow the updated disclosure requirements of Trustees’ remuneration and Expenses and removed a data screen Transactions with Trustees.
The new data screen has 4 sections:
- Opening text – this is prefilled with content from the AAD example.
- Trustees’ Disclosure – this provides a tabular layout to disclose the name of the Trustee, their designation and the actual amounts for remuneration and employers pension contributions paid. Once complete this will then automatically place the trustees’ into bandings as the legislation requires. For comparative disclosure purposes we have included a similar data screen in the August 2021 year end.
- Additional/replacement text area – this provides you the freedom to either add additional disclosure or fully replace the standard template.
- Expenses – this allows allow the relevant disclosure for travel and subsistence, the total values are derived and automatically calculated from sub account 11 in all of the trustee remunerations accounts, again saving you time, otherwise there is the ability to add additional disclosure or fully replace where needed.
The remuneration and expenses section can also be accessed from the interactive reports.
Accountants Report – new variant
Following this request by a group of customers we have introduce a new variant of the Accountants’ report removing any specific reference a particular accountancy body. This report can be enabled from the data screens for Accountants’ Report and is available for Limited Company / Partnership and Sole Trade formats.
IRIS Personal Tax
Making Tax Digital
We are in full swing with the MTD Pilot and as we continue to onboard agents to take part in the hand holding stage of the pilot, we continue to deliver MTD functionality to allow agents to complete all necessary obligations for an individual embarking on the MTD journey.
Please note if you’re interested in joining the MTD pilot or would like more information please contact us at MTD@IRIS.co.uk, were happy to help you navigate the MTD journey.
Foreign property
The Final piece to the in-year obligation puzzle, foreign property, adding to the existing functionality for Self-employment and UK property.
This release we are delivering functionality to allow individuals with foreign property income to be submitted to HMRC on a quarterly basis. We have incorporated this functionality seamlessly into the existing Digital Tax Hub.
Functionality covered for foreign property:
- submission of quarterly periods reporting income and expenses
- submission of adjustments and allowances
- retrieval of live financial position of foreign property business from HMRC
- retrieval and submission of Business source adjustment summary
- submission of End of Period Statement
Crystallisation
A term that we are all becoming increasingly familiar with, but if this is the first-time hearing/seeing this term, this is the process of finalising the financial position of an individua and the final step in the MTD journey, for a given tax year.
The digital tax hub has been updated to cater for individual who need to finalise their financial position once all in year obligations have been met for Self-employment, UK property and foreign property businesses.
The Crystallisation process has a tax calculation integrated reflecting the full financial position of the individual, which is returned from detail held by HMRC, giving the opportunity to review data held by HMRC.
This forever growing MTD process has been incorporated into our easily navigable digital tax hub which guides and prompts you from start to finish, ensuring you do not encounter any blockers along the MTD journey.
SmartTax
Allocation of allowances drilldown
SmartTax surely needs no further introduction, our cloud-based application sitting within a desktop product. We continue to deliver value added features to the application and this release we have added the allocation of allowances drilldown feature.
The updated functionality allows you to drill in to the ‘Deductions and Allowances’ line item giving a detailed breakdown of the items which contribute to the total deduction and allowance, in addition to this this feature will also identify what source the allowance have been allocated to whether its non-saving income, savings or dividends etc.
This feature allows you to ensure that the allowances are being allocated in the most efficient manner, as well as a useful tool to more easily explain how the tax of an individual is calculated.
Tax legislation and annual updates
- Updates to the Dividends databases
- Specials and exclusion updates covering tax years 2021, 2022 & 2023
IRIS Business Tax
Legislation updates
Corporation tax updates 2023
The return of marginal relief! Since April 2015, a single rate of Corporation tax has been applied to non-ring-fenced profits of a company. However, this is due to change, it was announced that from 1st April 2023 the main rate will be increased to 25% for profits over £250,000, along with the introduction of a small profits rate of 19% for companies with profits less than £50,000. With this range of CT rates, we then see the re-emergence of marginal relief for companies with profits between £50,000 and £250,000.
Due to this announcement, we have updated the business tax product for limited companies to calculate profits and automatically apply marginal relief where applicable while taking into consideration associated companies, straddling financial years and any franked investment income that may affect the calculation.
Although marginal relief may be back, the administrative burden of calculating the corporation tax of a limited company remains as simple as before.
Creative Tax Credits
The government has announced that they intend to increase the rates of cultural reliefs for the next two years, with rates for 2023 to 2024 returning to the current 2021/22 levels.
We have updated the business tax | tax credit functionality to ensure that all the latest rates are taken into consideration regardless of the accounting period, the software will recognise where periods straddle rate changes and allow for these claims to be correctly calculated.
Creative tax credit claims will continue to be a feature which is simple as before while trying to navigate the fluctuating rate changes of the tax credits through the following 3 years.
S455 tax rate update
It was announced that the rate of tax for overdrawn directors’ loan accounts (New loans outstanding) will increase to 33.75% from 1st April 2022.
We have updated the existing Loans to participants data entry to ensure that the correct level of tax payable is calculated for all new loans outstanding.
This feature continues to integrate with accounts production automatically identifying the movement on the directors’ loan account and applying the applicable rate of tax dependent on the posting date, ticking off another task that normally requires manual intervention.
Pre-validation warnings
HMRC have reported that currently they will not be able to accept returns with the following information:
- Claiming AIA which is above the £200,000 for periods ending after 01/04/2022
(AIA limit was due to decrease to £200,000 from 1st April 2022, however the £1,000,000 AIA limit was extended to 31st March 2023)
- Calculation of tax on an overdrawn director’s loan account at the newly increase rate of 33.75% (Rate increased from April 2022, therefore affecting accounting periods ending after 01/04/2022)
To ensure that you do not encounter a rejection error, we have implemented pre-filing validation warning which will advise where a client has encountered this scenario, which will allow for easy assessment of client data without having to manually review each client record.
IRIS Core
v22.2 delivers a new SQL OLEDB driver to support TLS 1.2
With the summer release of IRIS Accountancy Suite, we have moved IRIS off from using TLS versions 1.0 and 1.1 onto solely using version 1.2, improving the overall security of the product.
