A taxpayer may be able to obtain tax relief for expenditure on fixtures by claiming plant and machinery allowances. For more on the availability of plant and machinery allowances generally, see Practice Note: Plant and machinery allowances—types and rates and for more on how allowances are claimed and calculated, see Practice Notes: How plant and machinery allowances are claimed—income tax and How plant and machinery allowances are claimed—corporation tax. In order to qualify for allowances, expenditure on fixtures must meet both the same requirements as expenditure on other types of plant, and some additional rules that are specific to fixtures. The main requirements are: • the expenditure must be capital • it must be on the provision of the fixture, wholly or partly for the purposes of a qualifying activity (such as a trade or property business) carried on by the taxpayer • the fixture must qualify as plant or machinery • the taxpayer must own the fixture (including being deemed to be the owner only for capital allowances purposes) as a result of

This Practice Note explains the capital allowances rules for plant or machinery that is classified as an integral feature, such as electrical, cold water and heating systems. It covers the meaning of an integral feature, the tax treatment of repairs to integral features, and relevant anti avoidance rules. Certain items of plant and machinery (see Practice Note: Plant and machinery allowances—definition of plant and machinery) are classified as ‘integral features’ by statute. If an item falls within one of the categories of integral features, it: • does not have to satisfy the usual case law tests for deciding whether an asset constitutes plant or machinery for tax purposes (see Practice Note: Plant and machinery allowances—definition of plant and machinery), and • qualifies for a ‘special’ reduced rate of writing-down allowance of 6% per annum on a reducing balance basis rather than the main plant and machinery rate, which is 18% per annum until 31 March 2026 (corporates) and 5 April 2026 (non-corporates). The rate then reduces to 14% from 1 April 2026 (corporates)

This Practice Note describes the types of expenditure that will qualify for capital allowances on plant and machinery and the different rates at which relief is given. It provides guidance on the super-deduction, full expensing, the annual investment allowance, enhanced capital allowances, short-life assets, conventional plant and machinery allowances, integral features and long-life assets. Capital allowances are the means by which a taxpayer that does not calculate profits on the cash basis can obtain a deduction when calculating taxable profits for some, but not all, forms of capital expenditure. The default position is that the deduction is not for the whole of the expenditure at once, but is spread over a number of years as a proxy to broadly reflect to economic life of the asset. But various accelerated rates of relief have been, or are, available. For the meaning of capital expenditure, see Practice Note: What are capital allowances and capital expenditure? The generally most beneficial form of capital allowance is that for plant and machinery. This Practice Note looks

Law360: A Chilean plant-based food manufacturer has failed to register the trade mark 'Not Milk', after a European court ruled that it could not be protected because it merely described a key quality of its beverages.

Intellectual property (IP) protection is available for plant-related inventions through the patent system and through plant variety protection. Plant variety rights (PVRs) are a form of IP right giving the holder exclusive rights over commercialisation of propagation material and enabling them to collect royalties, for example via granting licences to propagate and market the variety. This Practice Note explains the IP protection available for individual plant varieties, known as plant variety rights (PVRs) or plant breeders’ rights. It covers the EU regime for the Community plant variety right (CPVR). It explains the validity requirements for obtaining PVR protection, the tests for infringement and the compulsory licensing of PVRs. This Practice Note also discusses the patent protection available for plant-related inventions, such as groups of plants that share a common trait and plant protection products such as pesticides.  For a discussion focusing on the UK regime for PVRs, see Practice Note: Plant variety rights and other plant-related IP protection—UK. Plant variety rights (PVRs) Legal

Intellectual property (IP) protection is available for plant-related inventions through the patent system and through plant variety protection. Plant variety rights (PVRs) are a form of IP right giving the holder exclusive rights over commercialisation of propagation material and enabling them to collect royalties, for example via granting licences to propagate and market the variety. This Practice Note explains the IP protection available for individual plant varieties, known as plant variety rights (PVRs) or plant breeders’ rights. It covers the UK regime under the Plant Varieties Act 1997 (PVA 1997) for the UK PVR. It explains the validity requirements for obtaining PVR protection, the tests for infringement and the compulsory licensing of PVRs. This Practice Note also discusses the patent protection available for plant-related inventions, such as groups of plants that share a common trait and plant protection products such as pesticides. For a discussion focusing solely on the EU regime for the Community plant variety right (CPVR), see Practice Note: Plant variety rights and other plant-related IP protection—EU.  Plant

Plastic packaging—the problem Globally there is increasing awareness of the problems arising from the world's consumption of plastic, as well as the associated problems arising from the generation of plastic waste. In the UK, plastic packaging accounts for 44% of plastic used and 67% of plastic waste, with over 2 million tonnes of plastic packaging being used each year. Generally, the vast majority of this is made from new, rather than recycled plastic, and is only used for a short period of time before being discarded. For more on the problem of plastic waste, see Practice Note: Waste types and controls—plastics. In the UK, the government sought to address plastic consumption through the introduction of the plastic packaging tax (PPT) from 1 April 2022, payable on the production and import of plastic packaging with less than 30% recycled content. The tax was initially payable at the rate of £200 per tonne and most recently was increased to £228.82 per tonne with effect from 1 April 2026. Through the PPT the

EU law analysis: Ted Shapiro, Partner of Wiggin LLP, considers the European Parliament and Council of the EU’s new provisional agreement, which addresses the concerns raised by the EU Member States following their rejection of the previous provisional agreement on new rules for platform workers.

The provision of access to a cloud platform which allows a customer to deploy software applications on that platform without having to buy and maintain the operating systems, middleware, network, servers or other hardware supporting the platform. Abbreviated to ‘PaaS’.

PaaS is the provision of access to a platform which allows the customer to deploy software applications without having to buy and maintain the middleware or hardware. It is similar to SaaS but, instead of allowing the customer to simply access and use the software, PaaS allows the customer to access a platform for the creation or management of software applications or services on top of the infrastructure provided by the supplier. PaaS is defined by NIST as follows: ‘The capability provided to the consumer is to deploy onto the cloud infrastructure consumer-created or acquired applications created using programming languages, libraries, services, and tools supported by the provider. The consumer does not manage or control the underlying cloud infrastructure including network, servers, operating systems, or storage, but has control over the deployed applications and possibly configuration settings for the application-hosting environment.’ PaaS will typically contain not only the elements of IaaS but also such items as: • application platforms • integration platforms • business analytics platforms • event-streaming services • monitoring, management, deployment and other related capabilities Examples of PaaS services include Windows Azure, AWS Elastic Beanstalk, Force.com and Google App Engine.

The Platform on Sustainable Finance has published a draft report by its Technical Working Group (TWG) for a call for feedback on preliminary recommendations for the review of the Climate Delegated Act 2021 (the Act) and the addition of activities to the EU taxonomy under its second mandate, which started on 7 March 2023. The report aims to enhance the EU Taxonomy's usability and effectiveness by simplifying its complexity and expanding the scope of activities.  The call for feedback runs to 5 February 2025.

The Platform on Sustainable Finance, an advisory body to the European Commission, has published ‘A compendium of market practices: How the EU’s taxonomy and sustainable finance framework are helping financial and non-financial actors transition to net zero’. The report focuses on seven stakeholder groups (corporates, credit institutions, investors, insurers, auditors and consultants, small and medium-sized enterprises, and the public sector), showing that the EU taxonomy and the other sustainable finance tools (eg the European Green Bond Standard) are being used for setting transition strategies, structuring financial transactions and reporting on sustainability efforts.