Plastic packaging tax is charged at £228.82 per tonne from 1 April 2026 on plastic packaging containing less than 30% recycled plastic. It applies to manufacturers and importers handling 10 tonnes or more in a 12-month period — a threshold that sounds industrial and is not: ten tonnes of packaging is a mid-sized e-commerce operation, not a factory.
Who has to register
You must register if you have manufactured or imported 10 tonnes or more of finished plastic packaging components in the last 12 months, or if you expect to do so in the next 30 days. Both tests matter, and the forward-looking one catches businesses ramping up: a company that signs a contract in March can cross the threshold in April on expectation alone.
Registration is required even where no tax is payable — a business whose entire range uses 30% or more recycled content still registers once it passes 10 tonnes, and then reports nil liability. This is the single most common compliance failure with the tax: businesses correctly conclude they owe nothing and incorrectly conclude they need do nothing.
Two definitions do the work. A plastic packaging component is a product designed to contain, protect, handle, deliver or present goods — which includes secondary and transit packaging, not just what the customer sees. And a component is treated as plastic where plastic is the heaviest single material by weight, so a predominantly cardboard box with a plastic window is not a plastic component, while a mostly-plastic laminate is, even where other materials are present.
Importers are caught more often than manufacturers
The obligation falls on whoever manufactures in the UK or imports into it, and importers of filled packaging are within scope for the packaging itself. A business importing bottled products imports the bottles, and the weight counts towards its threshold whether or not anyone ever thinks of it as packaging.
That is where the practical difficulty lies. A manufacturer knows what its packaging weighs and what it contains; an importer usually does not, and has to obtain it from an overseas supplier who has no reason to hold it in the format HMRC expects. Getting weight and recycled-content data written into supply agreements is far easier at the point of contracting than retrospectively.
Proving the 30%
The exemption from the charge depends on recycled content of 30% or more, measured by weight for each component. The claim must be supported by evidence — records tracing the recycled material through the production process, supplier certification, and a documented methodology for the calculation. A supplier's assertion in an email is not evidence; a chain of records that a compliance officer could follow is.
Where the content falls below 30%, the whole component is taxable at the full rate. There is no proportionate relief, which means the difference between 29% and 30% recycled content is the entire tax on that line.
Some categories sit outside the charge altogether: packaging used as transport packaging on imported goods, packaging for licensed human medicines, packaging permanently designated for a non-packaging use, and packaging used as aircraft, ship and rail stores. A small quantity of exemptions also apply to components that are themselves used in the production of other packaging, to avoid double counting.
Records, returns and the supply chain
Registered businesses file quarterly returns and pay by the last working day of the month following the end of the accounting period — not the last calendar day, which matters whenever a month ends on a weekend or a bank holiday — keeping records for six years. The records have to support the weight of packaging handled, the recycled content of each component, any exemptions claimed and any deferrals for exported goods — the export credit being the mechanism that relieves packaging that leaves the UK.
There is also a due diligence obligation that extends beyond the business's own records. Businesses in the supply chain can be made jointly and severally liable for unpaid tax where they knew or should have known that the tax had not been paid further up the chain — which converts a supplier's non-compliance into your liability. Documented checks on suppliers are the defence, and they need to exist before the question is asked.
What businesses actually do about it
Three responses, in ascending order of value. Comply and pay — treat it as a cost of goods and price it in. Reformulate to 30% recycled content, which removes the charge entirely and is now economic for many applications where it was not when the tax began. Or redesign to reduce packaging weight, which reduces the charge, the material cost and the transport cost at once.
The tax is deliberately small relative to turnover and deliberately annoying relative to effort. For most businesses the honest conclusion is that the compliance cost exceeds the tax — which is an argument for reformulating and registering properly, not for hoping the threshold is never tested.
Acumon advises on registration, threshold monitoring and the records behind a recycled-content claim as part of tax compliance work, alongside the wider environmental reporting covered in our guide to ESG reporting. If you import filled packaging and have never weighed it, that is the calculation to run first.