Industry

Tax for industry: R&D incentives, plastic tax and the carbon border adjustment

Nextica Law & Tax handles the full tax cycle of an industrial company and adds what a general bookkeeper usually does not file: the R&D and innovation deduction under art. 35 of the Spanish Corporate Income Tax Act for process and machinery improvements, the special tax on non-reusable plastic packaging of Law 7/2022, extended producer responsibility for packaging under Royal Decree 1055/2022, and the carbon border adjustment obligations (Regulation (EU) 2023/956) for importers of steel or aluminium.

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Industry pays taxes that did not exist five years ago. Nobody warns you: the first letter arrives and a whole year is already unfiled.

What's included

1. Inventorying the new obligations that reach the plant and were not there five years ago, with the date from which they apply to this specific company.

2. Registering and reporting extended producer responsibility for packaging, with the data on what is placed on the market.

3. Settling the tax on non-reusable plastic packaging when manufacturing, acquiring within the Union or importing, with the bookkeeping it requires.

4. Analysing the carbon border adjustment for the imports that trigger it, with the calculation of embedded emissions and the obligations calendar.

5. Preparing the R&D tax credit with the binding report that supports it, and not only with an internal view.

6. Taxation of cross-border operations

import and export VAT and transactions with non-established parties.

7. A single tax calendar for the plant, so none of the new obligations falls outside the one the adviser keeps.

TAXES THAT DID NOT EXIST FIVE YEARS AGO

Nobody warns you: the first letter arrives and a whole year is already undeclared, with liability accumulated from the first day of application.

R&D tax credit claimed without a binding report

in manufacturing the line between improving a process and doing technological innovation is crossed all the time without noticing, and without a report the credit still stands but is challengeable retrospectively.

art. 35 Corporate Income Tax Act

Undeclared packaging

whoever places packaging on the market has registration, scheme membership and reporting obligations. The liability exists even though nobody has assessed it yet, and it surfaces with the first letter.

RD 1055/2022 and Law 7/2022

Carbon border adjustment ignored

the importer of certain products has its own obligations to calculate and report embedded emissions, and discovering them late leaves a history that has to be reconstructed.

Regulation (EU) 2023/956

Frequently asked questions

We improve processes and machines, but we have no laboratory. Does that qualify?

Often yes. The deduction under art. 35 of the Corporate Income Tax Act distinguishes research and development from technological innovation, and much of what a factory does —line redesign, new tooling, a substantial improvement to a process or a product— falls under the second. What decides it is not wearing a lab coat but being able to document the novelty and the spend. That is why a reasoned report is prepared: it is what gives certainty in a later tax audit.

Who files the plastic packaging tax: the manufacturer or the importer?

It depends on each party's role in the chain and on whether the packaging is manufactured, imported or acquired within the European Union. The common mistake is assuming the supplier files it and finding out later that the obligation was your own. It is settled by looking at invoices and actual purchase flows, not at the org chart.

More frequently asked questions · DERECHO FISCAL

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