Energy supplier rewards and referral schemes

Scot_39

Theres conflicting statements out on the web about SEG and if taxable or not.  

Google AI finds references to it being taxable - as do sites like this one

So AI and sites like this one say it is taxable if the amount exceeds your domestic demand by 20%.

This link from 2023 

https://gbac.co.uk/blog/can-you-sell-power-back-to-the-national-grid-tax-free/#:~:text=If your annual income from excess energy,about SEG tariffs through the government website.

But as above is subject to the £1000 exemption for home trading.

Others - like this one from 2025 - talk of only taxable for business or very large solar arrays - over 10kWp.

https://ukenergypartnership.co.uk/blog/solar/smart-export-guarantee-earn-from-solar

The only HMRC link in first n search finds on google was down or dead.

Anyone got a current HMRC ruling for SEG - has it changed in last 2 years ?

QrizB

Somemof this confusion might be because SEG payments seem to be treated differently to FIT payments.

Netexporter

Ripple investments were limited to 120% of your current domestic usage. I invested to what was my then usage, for a "normal" house with gas heating. Now I have EV, ASHP and solar, so much higher gross demand, but far lower expenditure, owing to SEG and payments from the wind farm (when they resume).

My thinking at the moment is to self-consume as much as possible to keep below the £1000 limit. That may become easier if SEG payments are reduced, which I suspect they will.

Perhaps some sort of PAYE scheme, where energy suppliers forward a proportion of SEG payments to HMRC would be easier to administer than chasing up millions of consumers to fill out self-assessments for relatively trivial amounts?