Accounts & tax treatment of farming for the environment

Key points

• The Spring Budget brought the announcement of a consultation on the tax treatment of environmental land management schemes (ELMS) for farming.
• The focus of the consultation is the extension of the definition of APR to include environmental projects.
• ELMS are varied and tax planning must be tailor made.
• All tax planning should be undertaken before the contract is signed.

With the move away from the area-based subsidy regime in the UK such as the basic payment scheme (BPS) to the environmental land management schemes (ELMS) consideration has to be made towards the correct accounts tax and bookkeeping of such receipts.

Spring Budget announcement

The Spring Budget brought the announcement of a consultation on the tax treatment of ELMS for farming including a call for evidence on how the production and sale of ecosystem service units should be taxed aiming to understand the...