Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, whether he plans to review the system of business rates.
The Government concluded the last fundamental review of business rates in 2016. Respondents to the review agreed that property based taxes are easy to collect, difficult to avoid, relatively stable compared to other taxes, and that they have a clear link with local authority spending.
The Government has taken repeated action to reduce the burden of business rates for all ratepayers. Reforms and reliefs announced since Budget 2016 will reduce rates by more than £13 billion over the next five years. This includes switching from RPI to CPI indexation, increasing the frequency of revaluations, increasing the threshold for the standard multiplier to £51,000, and doubling the threshold for Small Business Rate Relief from April 2017, which means 655,000 of the smallest businesses now pay no business rates at all.