Plastic Packaging Tax warning issued

WITH THE one year anniversary of the Plastic Packaging Tax (PPT) being introduced in the UK a month away (1 April), Andrew Thurston, customs duty consultant at MHA, says HMRC is moving more quickly than expected to begin PPT audits and that we may see the PPT rate rise in future years.

Andrew said: “This should be a wakeup call to businesses: they don’t have the time to prepare that they might have thought.

“On the other hand, there is no denying that, at this early stage, the PPT is not a big tax. Calculations we’ve carried out suggest a charge of 0.003 pence for a unit for unrecycled plastic. This is clearly not going to be a major consideration and it won’t change behaviour, at least not yet.

“However HMRC are mainly interested in getting the tax up and running at this stage. Once it can observe trends in PPT revenue then the government may consider increasing the tax. The PPT is supposed to increase the use of recyclable plastic but the charge simply isn’t big enough to give business an incentive to switch suppliers so HMRC will probably hike the rate at some point.”