Carbon usage in spotlight
Accountants are to audit carbon as part of the Carbon Reduction Commitment
Ian Mackintosh, ASB chairman
Finance directors and auditors are sweating over new rules that will require
them to assess the accuracy of companies’ carbon usage.
Accountants will be required to get to grips with auditing carbon as part of
the
Carbon
Reduction Commitment.
Businesses that qualify for the CRC will have to pay for their estimated
carbon use before they use it.
But there are issues as to how to classify the charge: as an asset, an expense,
or a tax.
The CRC comes in next year, so some companies will have to work out what they
are doing by the first quarter next year,
KPMG said.
Lynton Richmond, audit and assurance partner at KPMG, said: ‘The standard
setters are going to have to put their heads together to help companies with the
accounting reporting of this.
‘How budgets are forecast and how to account for the CRC has to be on their
to do list for standard setters such as the
ASB and
IASB.’
Ian Mackintosh, chairman of the Accounting Standards Board, has said that
standards or principles for CRC are not currently being looked at by the ASB. He
added: ‘We’re waiting for the market to come to us before we look into this.’