Should salaries of employees working on eligible projects/activities be considered eligible OpEx?
Example: a consultancy firm provides GHG calculation and reduction strategy services, generating revenue (turnover) from these activities. The project is eligible under the EU Taxonomy.
In this case, should the salaries of employees working directly on the project be considered aligned OpEx? Do you have examples of similar cases?
I would love to hear your thoughts on this, thank you in advance!
1 Answer
Anonymous User
Under the EU Taxonomy Regulation, certain OpEx items can be considered “eligible” if they relate to:
-
Maintenance and repair of assets
-
Short-term leases
-
Personnel-related direct expenditures linked to the implementation of environmental objectives (particularly mitigation and adaptation)
-
R&D and other expenses that help improve environmental performance
In your scenario:
-
The consultancy firm provides GHG emissions calculation and reduction strategy services.
-
These services are Taxonomy-eligible (likely under Climate Change Mitigation objective).
-
Employees are working directly on delivering these services (and thus, directly on the eligible activity).
Yes, the salaries of these employees can generally be considered eligible OpEx, provided:
-
The salary costs are directly attributable to the delivery of the Taxonomy-aligned service/project.
-
There is documented traceability, such as time tracking, internal cost center allocation, or project accounting, to verify that the personnel are indeed dedicated to eligible activities.
