Alphatax Ireland Release Notes. Version T: E: W:

Transcription

1 Alphatax Ireland Release Notes Version 18.0 T: E: W:

2 1. Introduction... 3 About Version Technical Support Installation... 4 Installation Key... 4 Downloading and installing Alphatax... 4 Templates... 4 Alphatax platform support Enhancements and fixes... 5 CT and ROS XML Finance Act Intangible assets... 5 Group Miscellaneous... 9 Rental Income Summary... 9 Other income statement Exempt capital disposals Capital gain deferral The New CCM Dashboard Enabling the CCM Dashboard Interactive charts Setting your default CCM System Changes Alphatax Enterprise changes Miscellaneous

3 1. Introduction About Version 18.0 Welcome to the version 18.0 edition of Alphatax Ireland. This edition of Alphatax includes the following key changes: Form CT and ROS E-filing 2018 are included in this release; Finance Act 2017 changes to the Intangible assets regime; Foreign exchange rates can now be posted from the group file to the company files within the group; Miscellaneous enhancements together with updates to resolve certain user issues. Technical Support We provide a technical support help desk for users requiring assistance. The help desk can be contacted by telephone between the hours of 9.00 am and 5.30 pm, Monday to Friday excluding public holidays. If a consultant is not available to speak with you immediately, every effort will be made to return your call within one hour. If you require help or further information, please contact the support team on: Ireland: Tel: +353 (0) support@taxsystems.ie UK: Tel: +44(0) support@taxsystems.com Please note: We recommend that you use the Support option from the Help to send copies of the computation directly to Support. Alphatax software may not be copied, photocopied, reproduced, translated, or reduced to any electronic medium or machine-readable form, in whole or in part, without the express written permission of: Tax Systems 128 Lower Baggot Street, Dublin 2, D02 A430 Tel: +353 (0) support@taxsystems.ie Web: Version 18.0 All rights reserved Copyright Tax Computer Systems Limited Alphatax is a trademark of Tax Computer Systems Limited 3

4 2. Installation Installation Key Your 16-digit Alphatax installation key is provided in the that you received announcing the release. The Alphatax installation key is required to both download and install Alphatax. Downloading and installing Alphatax Please download the copy of Alphatax from the releases download site which will require you to enter your address and your 16-digit Alphatax installation key. This process will generate an automated with a unique URL which will be sent to your address. The URL will allow you to download the Alphatax installer along with other applications which you are registered to use and also installation guides and release notes. Click on Alphatax Installer 18.0.exe to initiate the installation process for which the Alphatax installation key will again be required. Press the Enter key at the prompts. The installation process will override the old version of Alphatax. For detailed information on the installation process refer to the Alphatax Ireland Installation Guide. This can be retrieved from the user documentation section of the download screen. Enterprise users, using the Oracle or MS SQL databases, should also run the database update script from within the Enterprise Manager utility. The database version is now 36. The Enterprise Manger is automatically extracted from within the Alphatax Installer package. Templates The installation will reinstall the standard Alphatax templates to ensure that you have the latest version. To allow you to retrieve your own versions of these templates, if applicable, the old templates are stored in a new folder called BACKUPXn (where n is a number incremented for each new installation). Please note: This part of the process may take some time. A progress bar displays the names of templates as they are being copied. Folders called BACKUPXn created in the version 17.0 release are removed with this release. Alphatax platform support Operating Systems SQL Server Alphatax is supported on Windows 7 and later operating systems. Alphatax Enterprise is supported on SQL Server 2008 and later versions. 4

5 3. Enhancements and fixes CT and ROS XML 2018 Alphatax has been updated with the CT and the new XML 2018 schema which enables E-filing for companies with a year end in Finance Act Intangible assets The Finance Act 2017 introduced legislation which limits the capital allowances and interest on borrowings to finance the purchase of intangible assets to 80% of the income arising from such assets. This legislation applies to assets acquired on or after 11 October Alphatax now has two intangible assets statements, one for assets acquired before 11 October 2017, which applies a 100% limit to the calculations and one for assets acquired on or after that date which applies the new 80% limitation. The new statement will not show in periods ending before the relevant date and in periods beginning after such date it will not be possible to make an addition to the older statement. Transitioning to the new rules Files which have been prepared in the prior release v17.0, for periods which include the date of commencement of the new regime, will need to be reviewed. Users will need to review any additions in the period and if such additions were acquired on or after 11 October 2017 they will need to remove them from that intangible asset statement and enter them in the new capital allowances intangibles limited to 80% statement. A note as per the screenshot below will inform users of this requirement. A diagnostic will also inform the user. 5

6 New requirements for companies who have assets acquired pre and post 11 October 2017 This release of Alphatax includes a Intangible allowance additions report to help identify files prepared in the previous release with intangible allowances additions in periods ending on or after 11 October These files will need to be analysed to decide whether the additions should be removed from the old statement and entered in the new one. If the assets were acquired on or 11 October 2017 they should be entered in the new statement as their allowances are restricted to 80% of the income from such assets. Companies which have intangible assets acquired before and after the date of commencement of the new rules, will need to calculate how much of the trading income from intangible assets was in relation to each pool of assets. Alphatax will display the intangible trade s trading income and the user will need to allocate how much of this is from the capital allowances acquired pre 11 October 2017, the balance will automatically be set against the remaining intangible assets. See screenshot below. In order to bring this requirement to the user s attention, Alphatax will give no capital allowances on intangible assets if the trading income has not been allocated. 6

7 Group The group module now allows users to input the foreign exchange rate in a statement within group and post these values, together with the currency symbol if desired, to the various company files. This new statement may also be used to simply review the foreign exchange rate currently being applied in the company files within the group. This check should reduce the risk of there being any unexpected inconsistency in the foreign exchange rate entered in different companies within the group. In order to view the new statement, users must choose to elect to do so in the Configuration statement. 7

8 The new statement will then appear allowing the user to enter the FX rates for the new period or amend errors in files for the current period. Each company file will be updated for the values entered and posted in the company file. To post from the group file, choose Tools, Post and Losses and other values. 8

9 4. Miscellaneous Rental Income Summary Following customer feedback, we have moved the input boxes that need to be completed regarding the number of properties that are residential or commercial premises. They now appear at the top of the statement, as per the screenshot below: 9

10 Other income statement The Other income statement now includes a column to enter Dividend Withholding Tax suffered on income received from a REIT. This appears when the accounting period ends on or after 1 January 2018 and was entered due to the requirement to capture this information on the Form CT Exempt capital disposals Users can now file a return with multiple s626b exempt capital disposals. The relevant information is filed for each disposal up to a maximum of five. Previously, users had to enter one value for date due to ROS restrictions. The limitation of five is a ROS restriction. Capital gain deferral The narrative for deferring a capital gain has been amended. 10

11 5. The New CCM Dashboard This edition of Alphatax includes the new Compliance Cycle Manager Dashboard (CCM Dashboard) - an enhanced version of the traditional CCM delivered in an embedded web browser within Alphatax Enterprise. Whilst retaining the full features associated with its predecessor, CCM Dashboard delivers more control by improving visibility over tasks and processes, aids workload prioritisation and gives you direct access to underlying information through the interactive charts. Key process information, that is synchronised with Alphatax, is displayed in a clean graphical interface, giving tax compliance teams and senior management real-time visibility, insight and control over tax processes. You may switch between the traditional CCM and the CCM Dashboard using the Window menu within Alphatax: Please note: If CCM Dashboard is not enabled in your organisation, a static web page will be displayed highlighting the features and benefits of the new Dashboard. 11

12 Enabling the CCM Dashboard The CCM Dashboard requires the installation of additional components to support the embedded web browser within the Alphatax Enterprise database. There is a separate CCM Dashboard Installation Guide and installation wizard available from our Download site: to help the team responsible for upgrading Alphatax, to install the necessary components. Interactive charts The CCM Dashboard features a modern dashboard layout with customisable panels which support a core library of five interactive charts to show: E-filing performance by month; Processes running on time, categorised by completed/past warning/past urgent; My recent activity; Computations, total by year; and Self-assessment. These panels are clickable and support drill down to the underlying Alphatax companies. The library of information that can be displayed in these panels will expand over future releases. The core library is delivered within Alphatax Enterprise at no additional cost. Setting your default CCM The default version of CCM that is launched within Alphatax is set by system administrator through the Enterprise database registry settings. The Enterprise Manager Administrator Guide contains details about the registry settings for CCM and CCM Dashboard. 12

13 6. System Changes Alphatax Enterprise changes Protected User In response to customer feedback, a new Alphatax Enterprise user permission-type has been created. The new Protected User is able to see the directory (node) containing the Alphatax computations, can open and make edits to the computations, but cannot save them back to the database. This supports the situation where the team responsible for preparing the computations want to give someone else restricted permissions to view and manage, but not permanently amend, them. The details on how Protected Users are attributed to nodes can be found within the Protected Node Management section in the Enterprise Manager Administration Guide. You will also find details of the new Enterprise database user-type, Enhanced User, within this guide. An Enhanced User can assign users to specific nodes as a Protected User. User Manager Table sort order We have corrected an issue whereby the User Manager Table in Enterprise Manager was no longer listing users in alphabetical order. This only occurred when the user accessing Enterprise manager was assigned to the top node. Miscellaneous We have corrected an issue whereby a company could not E-file if they had no rental income, but a balancing charge on a commercial property 13

14 Tax Computer Systems Limited 128 Lower Baggot Street Dublin 2 D02 A430 T: +353 (0) E: support@taxsystems.ie W: Copyright 2018 Tax Computer Systems Limited the trading subsidiary of Tax Systems plc Registered in Ireland company registration number