  The conditions for the absence of gauge anomalies in effective field theories
(EFT) are rivisited. General results from the cohomology of the BRST operator
do not prevent potential anomalies arising from the non-renormalizable sector,
when the gauge group is not semi-simple, like in the Standard Model EFT
(SMEFT). By considering a simple explicit model that mimics the SMEFT
properties, we compute the anomaly in the regularized theory, including a
complete set of dimension six operators. We show that the dependence of the
anomaly on the non-renormalizable part can be removed by adding a local
counterterm to the theory. As a result the condition for gauge anomaly
cancellation is completely controlled by the charge assignment of the fermion
sector, as in the renormalizable theory.
