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Companies now have until October to pay their carbon tax

With a massive stimulus package of R500 billion eating up the headlines since President Cyril Ramaphosa’s announcement it seems a rather important tax holiday was overlooked.

Specifically we’re talking about Carbon Tax payments now being due in October rather than in July as originally planned.

The exact payment deadline is now 31st October 2020 but a number of deadlines regarding the process have changed following the national lockdown.

“Carbon tax liable entities must go through a series of activities before they can submit their carbon tax environmental levy account, including the submission of their mandatory greenhouse gas emission report to the Department of Environment, Forestry and Fisheries; licencing their emissions generating facilities as customs and excise manufacturing warehouses for environmental levy purposes; and register for carbon tax on eFiling, if not already done so,” explained the Climate Neutral Group in an email to Hypertext.

As regards your Greenhouse Gas Emission reports, those need to submitted by 30th April if you’re submitting manually and by 31st May if you are submitting electronically through the South African Greenhouse Gas Emission Reporting System (SAGERS).

The Climate Neutral Group goes on to point out that some carbon tax allowances meant to cushion the blow of carbon tax payments are not yet in place.

“The trade exposure allowance and benchmarking regulations have been out for public comment and have yet to be finalised. It is to the advantage of entities liable to the carbon tax, that these regulations are finalised before the submission deadline of the carbon tax account,” the firm said.

The Carbon Offset Administration System (COAS) which is the electronic infrastructure that is meant to be used for listing, transfer and surrender of offsets against carbon tax liability is also not yet in place.

However, Climate Neutral Group says that the launch of COAS has been delayed due to lockdown,

“Due to the fact that the carbon tax payment deadline has been pushed back, it allows for more time to finalise COAS next month. This should allow more time for carbon tax payers to comply with the stipulated requirements to obtain a so-called ‘Extended Letter of Approval’ (ELoA), and to retire, list, transfer and obtain a Reg 8(e) certificate to claim the allowance against tax liability before 31 October 2020,” explained the Climate Neutral Group.

For companies who aren’t sure about whether they are liable to pay carbon tax or need assistance with any of the above we highly recommend getting in touch with the Climate Neutral Group. We’ve had dealings with the firm in the past and they are incredibly clued up with this matter.

[Image – CC 0 Pixabay]

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