Environmental tax rules must be clarified

The lack of clarity over tax rules for environmental land management schemes is harming the UK’s ambition to reach net zero by 2050 according to the Association of Taxation Technicians (ATT).

The woodland and peatland carbon codes allow landowners and tenants to generate ‘carbon credits’ by reducing or removing emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases such as by planting trees or restoring peatland. Landowners are able to generate income from the sale of these credits.

However unless guidance is clear on how the sale of credits is taxed some landowners could be put off from using the schemes with a knock-on effect for the government’s ambitions to bring all greenhouse gas emissions to net zero in the next 27 years.

Chair of the ATT’s technical steering group Senga Prior said: ‘In the UK the first...