Guidance: Register for Plastic Packaging Tax

Before registering, you should check if you need to register for Plastic Packaging Tax.

If your company is part of a group, find out about group registrations.

How to register

To register, you may need to provide the following information:

• your business type
• your businesses address and contact details
• the date your business became liable for Plastic Packaging Tax
• an estimate of how much finished plastic packaging you expect to manufacture or import in the next 12 months
• a customer reference number, which could be your:
  • Corporation Tax Unique Tax Reference
  • Self Assessment Unique Tax Reference
  • Company Reference number
  • Charity Registration number
  • National Insurance number
  • temporary National Insurance number

If you’re a non-UK business with no UK establishment and do not have any of the reference numbers listed, you can still register for the tax.

You will need to declare the information you have given is correct.

After you’ve registered

After registering you will be given a reference number which you may wish to make a note of.

If your circumstances change or you have entered incorrect information, you must tell us within 30 days of either the day after:

• you discover that the original information you provided is inaccurate
• the change in circumstances

You should make sure that you keep the records you need to complete your returns.

Creating invoices

If you’re responsible for accounting for the tax, you are encouraged to make the Plastic Packaging Tax you have paid visible to your business customers, and work with them to try and increase the amount of recycled plastic they use wherever possible.

More information about including a Plastic Packaging Tax statement with invoices will be published in due course. We will give businesses time to prepare and make any required changes to their systems.

Charging VAT

If you pay Plastic Packaging Tax on plastic packaging components that you have manufactured or imported, you can choose to increase the price you charge for that packaging to help cover the cost of the tax. This is a commercial decision for you to take.

Plastic Packaging Tax is only paid once when the packaging component is finished or imported. It is not passed down the supply chain as a separately identifiable charge like VAT.

VAT will continue to be payable on the whole price charged for the goods you sell according to VAT rules.

If you increase your price of your plastic packaging because of Plastic Packaging Tax, VAT will be payable on the whole of the new price.

Find out how to claim a credit or defer paying the tax.

Death, incapacity or insolvency

Another person can temporarily take over responsibility for dealing with Plastic Packaging Tax on another persons behalf if someone registered for the tax:

• dies
• becomes incapacitated
• becomes insolvent

You need to notify HMRC within 21 days of temporarily taking over responsibility.

You must provide evidence that you have authority to act in relation to the business.

When someone has died you must provide a copy of the death certificate or other evidence of their date of death.

When someone has become incapacitated you must provide details of how they’re incapacitated and the date it began.

When a business has become insolvent you must provide the date when they became subject to the insolvency procedure and the nature of the procedure.

Once the written request has been accepted by HMRC the temporary treatment will last for a period of 6 months or until the business activities are settled and the temporary treatment ends.

This means one of the following will take place:

• there is a new responsible person for the business activities
• the person is no longer incapacitated and resumes their business activities
• the insolvency of the business is settled