Council Tax Accounting Model 2018-19
Summary
This model automatically produces the journals and subsequent Collection Fund and General Fund positions for compliance with the 2018/19 Accounting Code of Practice and statutory requirements for council tax, for Billing and Precepting Authorities. It can provide assurance and audit trail to your accounting approach for year-end and can also act as a monitoring and forecasting tool throughout the year.
Format
XLS
Published
March/2019
Author
CIPFA
£2,500.00
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What will it help you with
The Council Tax Accounting Model helps Billing Authorities meet the Collection Fund accounting requirements of the 2018/19 Accounting Code and associated statutory regulations. The model can also help with estimation of the statutory surplus/deficit for 15 January purposes and assist with monitoring and forecasting outturn positions on the Collection Fund and General Fund.
The model also produces the figures to be communicated to major preceptors at year-end to action their own such accounting requirements. Precepting Authorities can use the model to comply with the 2018/19 Code and statutory requirements if they can obtain the relevant information from their Billing Authorities.
Summary of features
The model requires minimum input to a limited number of data cells regarding council tax precepts, actual council tax income for the year, relevant cashbook transactions and balances brought forward.
The model automatically converts the inputs to a working model of the Collection Fund Control Account and General Fund (Comprehensive Income and Expenditure Statement and Movement in Reserves Statement). It identifies and models the transactions needed to reflect all aspects (barring any local interpretation) of the accounting and regulatory requirements and calculates the year-end Balance Sheet figures, apportioning these as required between Billing and Precepting Authorities. Factoring in the cash transactions will model the complete final position of the council tax impact on the accounts.
The outputs from the working model then generate the relevant journals needing to be actioned on the authority’s ledger to cover both the accounting and statutory requirements and produce the Collection Fund and General Fund figures to be included in each authority’s statement of accounts.
The model then summarises the General Fund position of the authority, which can be used as a reconciliation tool to ensure that, once the journals have been posted, the ledger reflects what is expected. The model also produces a Council Tax Collection Fund Statement. Both of these elements of the model mean that it can be used not only for year-end accounting but also in the estimation process of the statutory surplus/deficit for 15 January purposes and also in monitoring the Collection Fund and General Fund positions at any point during the year and can also demonstrate the impact of forecast outturn figures.
Customer benefit
Using the model is a relatively quick way of producing the council tax element of the complex Collection Fund. It can provide assurance on your understanding and application of the accounting and statutory requirements, an audit trail of your approach and a reconciliation tool for populating and checking your financial statements. Used together with the ‘Accounting for NDR Model’ it provides a complete package for producing the Collection Fund accounts and the General Fund implications at any point in the year, closedown, in-year monitoring or forecasting.
"I would wholeheartedly endorse the use of the Collection Fund models designed by Caroline White – they (with Caroline’s review of our CF accounts) were very helpful in supporting the closure of the Collection Fund 2017-18 for Southwark Council and provided assurance from the technical perspective, especially"
Jade Cheung, Divisional Accountant, Corporate Accounting and Financial Reporting, Southwark Council