fight rates
19 comments By fight rates
I remember him giving us the same lies before the last election.
The valuation on my small shop is £1500 per sq m compared to our local urban supermarket valued at £120 per sq m, Harrods at £385 per sq m or online retailer warehouse up north at £35 per sq m. We have lost 75 of our fellow shop owners in the last year, 2 in the last month, just before Christmas. One that closed last week had just lasted six months. There are not many independent retailers left in our town, of those left many cannot wait for their leases to finish so that they can retire or trade online. The whole system is unfair & needs to be changed.
Nothing will happen. I remember your campaign at the same time last year
https://www.retail-week.com/comment/comment-join-our-push-for-business-rates-freeze/5041861.article?blocktitle=Retail-Comment-&-Opinion&contentID=5972
It is the same old story with politicians, lots of talk but no action..I am not just angry, I am seething with rage! Just this week we have also seen a report that states that of all the 33 Developed countries in the world the UK has the highest property taxes of all of them. When I explain to foreign visitors in to my shop that we have local coffee shops paying over £6500 per month in business rates they are totally stunned. They also cannot believe that for these enormous taxes we get no bin collection, no local vote, no parking vouchers, our customers get no free parking, we get no street cleaning & the local police commissioner has got rid of our local police counter. At the same time some local shop owners are paying 40 times what millionaire home owners pay in council tax. Local council tax has been frozen for five years so that local politicians can stay in office & business rates have gone up locally for the past 17 years. I am also stunned that the valuation on my small shop is £1500 per sq m compared to our local urban supermarket valued at £120 per sq m, Harrods at £385 per sq m or online retailer warehouse up north at £35 per sq m. We have lost 75 of our fellow shop owners in the last year, 2 in the last week, just a month before Christmas. One that closed last week had just lasted six months. There are not many independent retailers left in our town, of those left many cannot wait for their leases to finish so that they can retire or trade online from their bedrooms. I for one intend to carry on, I have not invested everything for the past fifteen years to hand over my keys to the council bailiffs. I intend to move into the basement of my shop if my home is repossessed where the bailiffs can extract me.
I cannot believe these crass comments from this politician who obviously has no clue of the destruction this tax is causing. Just this week I have spoken to two more fellow shop owners who have had to shut their shops for good as they have run out of money. One who has been in our small town for 15 years & had bailiffs chasing him for over £20,000 of overdue rates. Rather than being given a chance to pay monies back after the lucrative Christmas period he was forced into closing. This tax on retail is destroying our livelihoods!
It is far worse than the Poll tax was. I am a small shop owner & rates in our town have gone up for 16 years in a row & going up again next year. Council tax has been frozen in our town for five years in a row. We have coffee shops in our town now paying over £6000 a month in rates, or 40 times a council tax payer in an equivalent value property. Can you imagine what kind of riots we would have had on our streets if it was the other way round. The politicians realize that as shop owners we have no local vote & we are working 7 days a week & have no time to protest. UK shop owners are paying the highest property taxes in the world & the government could not care less.
Ministers wont change the system or reduce rates as they know that shop owners have no direct vote. In our small town Councillors have frozen council tax for five years in a row so that they can win votes. The money to support this has to come from somewhere, so the politicians just pile it onto rates & the rates in my town have gone up 17 years in a row, it is a guaranteed & very efficient method of taxation. But the burden on small shop owners has become ludicrous. We have coffee shops paying £6500 a month in rates. Unless you are a multiple you can never make a profit with taxes like that. As retailers we cannot protest with burning barricades in our high street as we will upset our customers & we cannot, not pay our rates as bailiffs will remove goods. But we need to inform the public on how high rates really are & how rates are the highest in Europe & possibly the world.
I am a shop owner; we have seen 65 shops close in my town in the last year. Business rates are the biggest cause of shop decline. The English shop rates are the highest rates/property taxes in the world. My rates have increased 120% in the last five years and have gone up for the past 17 years in a row. One of my fellow shop owners in the centre of town is paying £6000 per month in rates alone! Some months when he is quiet he reckons all his profit just goes on paying rates. These rates are forty times higher than an equivalent council tax payer in the same value property & yet we do not get bins emptied & can’t get parking vouchers. Local council tax has been frozen for the last five years. The government seem to think they can charge shop owners what they want in taxes as we do not have a direct vote. For all the noise about supporting retail, politicians have done nothing for retailers. We are just one big fat cash cow for them.
I am a shop owner; we have seen 65 shops close in my town in the last year. Business rates are the biggest cause of shop decline. The English shop rates are the highest rates/property taxes in the world. My rates have increased 120% in the last five years and have gone up for the past 17 years in a row. One of my fellow shop owners in the centre of town is paying £6000 per month in rates alone! Some months when he is quiet he reckons all his profit just goes on paying rates. These rates are forty times higher than an equivalent council tax payer in the same value property & yet we do not get bins emptied & can’t get parking vouchers. Local council tax has been frozen for the last five years. The government seem to think they can charge shop owners what they want in taxes as we do not have a direct vote. For all the noise about supporting retail, politicians have done nothing for retailers. We are just one big fat cash cow for them.
When I appealed the valuation on my shop the VOA did nothing for 2 years. I really do not know why it takes so long? Every time I chased them the valuation officer was away on a golf competition. He is a good golfer, was the explanation. I am not surprised with the amount he was practicing. The only time they jumped into action was when I volunteered to appeal the ratings free of charge for the whole street. I wrote to the local MP, the head of the VOA & others. This then magically granted the whole street a valuation reduction of nearly 20% in weeks. The VOA do not like to be exposed, but I urge retailers who have not appealed to do your own appeals & write to your MP to put the pressure on them.
I would say it is higher than that. For example. A Fish & Chip shop in Huddersfield has a Zone A valuation of £1100 per m2. Harrods in London is valued at £185 per m2. The whole revaluation system is rotten & unfit for purpose. It needs to be completely scrapped in favor of a corporation tax based on profit as it is in most countries. Shop closures are far worse in the UK when compared globally. This is down to one reason, unfair Business rates!
You have raised some very valid points on the VOA John. I have had a long six years of appeals & tribunals with them. It makes my blood boil what despair, the VOA have brought to some of my fellow shop owners in our city. Why does it take 2.5 years to complete a valuation appeal? We have shop owners who have been paying themselves £100 per month in wages & not eating properly so that they can pay their rates to the council.
This is nowhere near enough of a cut. To save £20 a month when we are paying £2000 is nothing other than pathetic. It is called Labour spin. Headline comments that amount to peanuts.
Rents are high, but business rates are the killer. I am a shop owner & landlords who have any sense are dropping rent to allow shop owners to stay. One of my neighbors is paying £2500 a month in rent, yet his rates are £3000 a month. This is because his landlord put him on a profit based rent. He asked the valuation office who set the rates to lower his valuation, but they declined as the rates are set on a valuation in 2008 when the shop was actually empty! The rating system is totally inflexible.
The Supermarkets also pay a lower pro rata UBR than pub & shop owners. Supermarkets also do not pay rates on their parking spaces which are a fundamental part of their business. My Local Tesco is charged £37 per square metre for its rateable value compared to my small shop valuation of £1400 per sq m.Harrods also have a lower rate than small shops at £189 per sq m. Why does it also take the valuation office two years to complete an appeal? The whole rating system is unfair & not fit for purpose.It is just spin, all talk & no action. Rents are high, but business rates are the killer. I am a shop owner & landlords who have any sense are dropping rent to allow shop owners to stay. One of my neighbors is paying £2500 a month in rent, yet his rates are £3000 a month. This is because his landlord put him on a profit based rent. He asked the valuation office who set the rates to lower his valuation, but they declined as the rates are set on a valuation in 2008 when the shop was actually empty! The rating system is totally inflexible. Other shop owners are on free rental periods just so they dont leave. Rates never go down & we get next to nothing for them. Why does France & Germany have thriving small independent shops? Because they are not taxed like us shop owners in this country.
The English shop rates are the highest rates/property taxes in the world. My rates have increased 120% in the last five years and have gone up for the past 15 years in a row. Where local council tax has been frozen for 4 years. One of my fellow shop owners in the center of town is paying £3500 per month in rates alone! This is 23 times higher than an equivalent council tax payer in the same value property. The government seem to think they can charge shop owners what they want in taxes as we do not have a direct vote. If they had increased council tax by 5.6% there would be riots in the streets.
This debate is about politics & it exposes just how insignificant I am as a small shop owner to our local MP & local councilors. Even though the business rates I pay on my shop are 20 times higher than an equivalent council tax payer in my road I do not have a local vote as I cannot afford to live near my shop, as most of my income goes on paying this totally unfair tax. Local council tax has been frozen in our area for 5 years. Yet the rates on my shop have sky rocketed for the past 15 years in a row. If they had increased council tax as much, there would be riots on our streets. The same applies when I complain that I get no rubbish collection & that the cost of a local parking permit for a resident is £38, for a shop owner it is £500. As shop owners we are paying the highest property taxes in the world & we are nothing more than dirt on a politicians shoe. It is time for us to stand up & fight this totally unfair tax.
As a UK shop owner I am paying the highest property taxes/Business rates in the world. The whole system of rates needs to be brought in line with the rest of the world. This tends to be a local tax based on profits. It should not be based on a system that was created in the 15th Century. Rates must also be fair, for example my small shop employing one person not in a high street is valued three times higher on Zone A valuation than Harrods in Central London. Rates are a completely unfair tax that needs to be changed.
What we did as a street of shop owners was to get together & put in a joint appeal against the Business rate valuations of our shops to the Valuation office(VOA). We also lobbied the local MP & local press to highlight the enormous rates increases we have had over the last fifteen years. Highlighting how this country has the highest property taxes in the world. We made the front page of the local papers & had a very quick appeal decision of a rates reduction for the whole street. As we did not use a rating agent it did not cost us anything & got us some good publicity. It was funny how quickly the VOA reacted when we appealed as a group! We also now have a great rent database which helps us when it comes time for rent reviews.
Commented on: 2015-04-29T11:53:38.130
Liberal Democrats commit to reforming business rates in manifesto