ESG insights for Tax & Legal | June 2024
Welcome to our third edition of ESG Insights for Tax & Legal, keeping you informed of the latest developments in the fast-moving world of ESG!
This ESG Tax & Legal round-up features:
2. Plastic Tax in Europe: What's new?
3. Future of Tax & Legal podcasts: Can tax policy enforce circular economies?
1. Updated ESG Tax Tracker
The KPMG ESG Tax Tracker, provides insight into the global ESG and Sustainability landscape for taxes, incentives and grants.
The regulatory landscape is changing rapidly. Governments across the globe are introducing tax measures and incentives to positively influence behaviors that are impacting the environment and contributing to climate change. Governments must fulfill their commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions as they strive to control and mitigate climate change. From a global perspective, we are seeing the implementation of environmental taxes, such as new carbon and plastic taxes, the expansion of the scope of carbon pricing systems, and various funding opportunities to support green investments, such as sustainable energy transitions.
We have updated the ESG tax tracker, download the updated version here.
2. Plastic Tax in Europe: What's new?
The Italian plastics tax, which was scheduled for implementation on 1 July 2024, has once again been postponed. On 28th May 2024, Law no. 67/2024 was published in the Italian Official Journal, which provided for the extension of the Plastic Tax to 1 July 2026. While the Italian Government didn’t provide any detailed reasons for their decision to postpone, it seems that, based on a number of press reports, they are facing considerable pressure from industry and sector unions to postpone the implementation of plastic taxes once again.
The scope of the plastics tax will apply to single-use plastic products designed to be used with the purpose of containment, protection, handling, delivery (or presentation) of goods or foodstuffs (i.e. tetra pack, bottles, bags, packaging materials, polystyrene, stretch film, bowls, food containers, other containers preforms, tubes etc.), as well as to semi-finished plastic products, from which non-reusable plastic packaging will be produced. The tax obligation will arise in connection with the domestic production of single-use plastic products, their final import, or their introduction from other EU Countries, and will be due at the time of release for consumption in the territory of the Italian Member State.
The Netherlands
The new Dutch government has announced the introduction of a circular plastic tax per 2028. We expect more and more countries will follow.
3. Future of Tax & Legal podcasts: Can tax policy enforce circular economies?
Podcast series for tax leaders: Short podcasts addressing some of the most pressing issues and opportunities facing tax departments in the modern business world. In the first episode we look at what a circular economy is and what is meant by a circular economy taxation framework, while exploring different circular economy regulatory trends and the importance of keeping the tax function close to operations in a rapidly evolving regulatory landscape. In part two we look into the role of the tax function towards a circular economy and whether it's possible for tax policies to enforce circular economies.
