Listed waste firm handed £16.5m final tax bill

Wetherby waste management group Augean has been handed its final HMRC landfill tax bill, totalling £16.2m; which it says it will appeal.

Listed Augean, one of the UK’s leading specialist waste management businesses, was last year  hit with several pre-assessment notifications from HMRC for both its Augean North and Augean South divisions. Its northern arm was handed a £10.5m bill in October and its southern arm was handed a £18.4m bill in November, excluding interest.

This morning the firm said its final assessment from HMRC for Augean South totalled £16.2m (excluding interest) – covering the period ending 28 February 2015 to 31 May 2018. It added that there “may be other final assessments for other time periods” for Augean South.

Augean said it would appeal the Augean South assessment in the appropriate timescale and that HMRC is considering whether penalties may be appropriate. It announced in October that it would appeal the tax bill for its Northern business. 

The firm added: “The Group acknowledge the positive and welcome news to issue the final assessment for Augean South Limited and maintain our position based on the legal advice received and independent reviews of our systems.  The Group will take all appropriate legal channels to challenge the assessment received and seek to mitigate payment of the tax until these legal appeals have concluded.”

Augean also this morning announced renewed contracts, with terms of up to four years, with  strategically important customers in Energy from Waste (“EfW”) and North Sea oil and industrial services. These contracts generated over one third of the Group profit for Augean in the year ended December 2018.

Augean added: “In addition to contract renewals with existing customers, the Group has recently been awarded new contracts, with terms of up to three years, for ash from several EfW plants across the UK. The annual volume of ash from these new EfW plants is around half of the Group’s existing annual ash volumes. The additional volume from these contracts is expected to impact incrementally from late 2019 through 2020 as these EfW plants are commissioned, with the greater impact expected through 2020 onwards. These wins underpin current market expectations for 2019 and growth during 2020 and beyond.”

It has also signed a three-year framework agreement with Land & Water, the market leading specialist for dredging of inland waterways, to preferentially treat and landfill (hazardous) materials arising from their dredging activities.

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