Question to the HM Treasury:

To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, what assessment he has made of the potential merits of lifting the Small Business Rates Threshold to £25,000 for SMEs in winter 2022.

Small Business Rate Relief (SBRR) is available to businesses with a single property with a rateable value below the threshold of £15,000. The relief targets the smallest businesses where help is needed most, with more than 700,000 of the smallest businesses paying no rates at all. Further increases in the generosity of SBRR would be a broad-based and an indiscriminate way to provide support and would therefore be a poorly targeted form of relief.

At Autumn Budget 2021, the Government announced a package of changes worth £7 billion to business over the next 5 years. This includes a freeze to the multiplier for 2022-23, which will support all ratepayers large and small, and almost £1.7 billion in support for the retail, hospitality, and leisure sectors in 2022-23.

As with all taxes, the Government keeps business rates under review.