Yahoo Movies Evening Standard Comment: Business rates reform
Business rates reform
There was much in the Budget for business to welcome, from extending the VAT cut for hospitality to the £5billion Restart Grants — something we called for in these pages last week.
Firms will also benefit from an extension of business rates relief. The Chancellor announced he would continue the 100 per cent business rates holiday until the end of June, while for a further nine months, rates would be discounted.
We support all the help our battered retail and hospitality sector can get, but question why support tapers off after only three months. Businesses that can reopen this spring face mounting bills. They need time to rebuild cash reserves.
Some have suggested providing 100 per cent business rates relief for longer, rather than extending the furlough beyond June, because most businesses have already made the redundancies they plan to make.
Ultimately, high street retailers wanted to see a fundamental reform of the business rates system. The tax is currently linked to the underlying value of a property, but they are still based on valuations from April 2015. That will not reflect how real estate values in the retail sector have been hit first by competition from online and now by the pandemic.
The final report of the Government’s review of business rates, announced by the Chancellor last year, will be published in the autumn. Businesses in the capital and around the country will be desperate for a fairer system to help them drive the UK’s economic recovery.
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