HM Revenue & Customs and Companies House have today announced a common approach to filing company accounts online in a bid to cut down red tape for business.

Companies House said that, in order to reduce potential administrative burdens, it would accept company accounts in a data format known as Inline XBRL.

This is the same format that will have to be used for all company tax returns submitted online to the HMRC from April 2011.

HMRC programme director described the move as “an important step towards our goal of offering a joint filing facility for company accounts and company tax returns, as recommended by Lord Carter’s review of HMRC’s online services”.

Companies House will introduce their iXBRL service for unaudited full accounts by the summer of 2010, and then continue to develop their iXBRL capability for all the main types of accounts they receive.