UK CBAM Regulatory Tracker

Yes. HMRC guidance published 16 July 2026 confirms the full accreditation standards a verifier must meet: accredited by a body that is a full member of Global Accreditation Cooperation Incorporated (GACI), a signatory to the GACI Multilateral Recognition Agreement, and independent of the installation, the importer, and the jurisdiction of the qualifying carbon pricing scheme. The verifier must also be accredited to ISO/IEC 17029:2019, ISO 14064-3:2019, ISO 14065:2020, and ISO 14066:2023. Note: this confirms the qualifying standards, not a curated named list of individually approved verifiers — that distinction still matters when vetting a specific provider.

HMRC's Policy Paper (published 16 July 2026) confirms the full transitional table. First accounting period: 1 January–31 December 2027, return and payment due 31 May 2028. From 1 January 2028, periods move to a quarterly cycle with a gradually narrowing return/payment window: Q1 2028 (Jan–Mar) due 31 July 2028; Q2 2028 (Apr–Jun) due 29 September 2028; Q3 2028 (Jul–Sep) due 30 November 2028; Q4 2028 (Oct–Dec) due 28 February 2029. The window narrows to the standard 2-month cycle from 2029 onward.

The statutory default is confirmed and in force: quarterly accounting periods ending March, June, September and December, with payment and returns due by the last working day of the second month after each period ends.

Made law: the CBAM (Transitory Provision) Regulations 2026 (SI 2026/830) were made 14 July 2026, in force 1 January 2027. Anyone who triggers registration during 2027 has until 31 January 2028 to register, rather than the standard 30-day window (reg. 2(2)). The underlying rolling trigger — £50k trailing-12-month value, checked monthly, or a 30-day forward test — is confirmed verbatim in Schedule 17 Part 2 and always applies regardless: liability and record-keeping run from the trigger date, not from any easement date. See our full breakdown of this myth →.

Made law as SI 2026/802 on 13 July 2026, in force 1 January 2027. Covers registration particulars (reg. 7 in the made numbering — EORI, VAT number, trigger date, value of goods, estimated 12-month sector weight), return contents on 8-digit commodity codes (reg. 10), a new record-keeping duty on place-of-origin evidence (reg. 11), reimbursement, and 6-year record retention. The return-contents list is shorter than the February draft — explicit per-good emissions detail isn't listed — but reg. 10(3) lets HMRC add return content by notice, the likely route for emissions reporting. Renumbering vs the February draft: registration particulars moved from reg. 2 to reg. 7; return contents from reg. 6 to reg. 10; Schedule 16 (Bill numbering) is Schedule 17 (enacted).

No. This is blocked outright, in force since commencement. General error correction remains available as a separate, narrower power. See our full breakdown of this myth →.

HMRC's confirmed list of Qualifying Carbon Pricing Schemes, announced 27 August 2026 (based on information as of 19 June 2026), names sixteen schemes: Australia's Safeguard Mechanism, Canada's Federal OBPS, Chile's Carbon Tax, China's National ETS, the EU ETS, India's CCTS, Japan's GX-ETS, Kazakhstan's ETS, South Korea's K-ETS, Montenegro's ETS, New Zealand's ETS, Serbia's Carbon Tax, Singapore's Carbon Tax, South Africa's Carbon Tax, the Swiss ETS, and Taiwan's Carbon Fee. Turkey's TR-ETS is notably absent from this list — as of the published version, it does not currently meet HMRC's qualifying criteria, a more fundamental gap than a free-allocation problem. The list is explicitly non-exhaustive and under active review; HMRC has committed to adding schemes that meet the criteria, including ones still in development, via a published submission route. Qualifying on the list is still not the same as receiving meaningful relief: China and South Korea both allocate close to 100% of allowances free to steel as a carbon-leakage sector, so the effective price actually paid — and therefore the relief available — can remain close to zero even though both schemes are confirmed to qualify. India's CCTS also qualifies but has no confirmed £/tCO₂e price yet. See our full breakdown of this myth →.

No — UK CBAM covers direct (Scope 1) emissions only from January 2027. Indirect emissions are excluded until 2029 at the earliest. We track this line for any change announcement.

Only draft/illustrative values exist, published in the April 2026 System Boundaries Document. No confirmed HMRC default emission values have been published. By design, any default eventually set cannot offer an advantage over verified data — including the advantage of simply not paying to verify.

Draft, published April 2026 (post-Royal Assent). Sets out the 8-step actual-emissions methodology, GWP factors (N₂O ×265, CF₄ ×6,630, C₂F₆ ×11,100), verifier independence standards, and the GACI accreditation requirement. Not yet made in final form.

No sector-specific quarterly CBAM rate has been published. The rate is recalculated every quarter by statute, not fixed annually. HMRC's Policy Summary commits to publishing rates at the start of each quarter from 1 January 2027, with an illustrative example rate due in Autumn 2026 — we track for that. The £55/tCO₂e figure used in planning tools across the industry is a UK ETS-derived planning proxy — it is not a published HMRC rate and should never be treated as one.