Improvements to business rates system essential for new Government to eliminate budget deficit by 2018

The Chancellor must invest in the business rates system to ensure it helps rather than hinders UK businesses. That is the central message from Commercial Valuers & Surveyors (CVS), the UK’s leading business rates adviser, in a letter issued to George Osborne this week.

CVS is arguing – based on its work with more than 50,000 largely SME business clients – that greater efficiency, transparency and fairness must be central to any reform. It is also demanding a reversal from the current burden of responsibility sitting with the taxpayer and that the Valuation Office Agency should do more to disclose and substantiate the calculations by which an occupier’s business rates bill has been arrived at.

“The coalition Government introduced several consultations on business rates,” says Mark Rigby, Chief Executive of CVS, “but did not enact any real change and will therefore be remembered for its postponement of the revaluation (from 2015 to 2017) more than anything it did to help businesses struggling with an unwieldy and opaque business rates system. What CVS – and the many businesses for which we act – want to see is investment into the business rates system to make it better. If the new Government is serious about being pro business and if it wants to achieve its fiscal targets without choking off growth, it needs to put adequate resources into the Valuation Office Agency as well as change the culture around business rates.”

CVS is arguing that improvements to the business rates system will be essential if the new Government is to make good in its commitment to eliminate the budget deficit by 2018 while avoiding any increases in income tax, National Insurance and VAT.

CVS is also championing the importance of predictability and certainty for business rates bills, echoing the sentiment of its most recent client survey through which businesses supported a five-year revaluation cycle.

In his letter to the Chancellor, Mark Rigby sets out CVS’s recommendations for action including:

• Bring UK firms greater transparency and better access to the evidence behind their tax bill
• Taking business rates into the 21st century through the best use of digital technology
• Supporting the smallest firms by removing them from business rates altogether
• Retaining a five year cycle of revaluation and a property-based assessment method which gives certainty and predictability and allows businesses to budget and forward plan
• Providing businesses with the confidence that they are being taken seriously by adequately resourcing and investing in the Valuation Office Agency.

Mark Rigby writes in his letter: “Under the previous coalition Government, consultations were brought forward but no definitive action was taken to address weaknesses in the business rates system. So now is the time for clear action. We call for HM Treasury to rebalance the business rates system so that it better serves the needs of the ratepayer, as well as Government.”

CVS adds that it is ready to participate in assisting this process of improvement and to offer its own experience and expertise to support the new Government in making such improvements.

“Businesses spent much of the last Parliament calling for change and improvement,” adds Mark Rigby, “only to be met by committees and consultations. Now is the time for action and to modernise, resource and re-balance the business rates system. It’s time for the Chancellor to show he is genuinely pro-business by grasping that nettle.”