High-Street Shops Facing Huge Jump In Business Taxes Next April

[interestrateripoff]

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/high-street-shops-facing-huge-jump-in-business-taxes-next-april-a6699291.html

High-street retailers are set to be hit with a 17.2 per cent jump in business rates bills as the amount paid by stores and chains breaks through the £8bn-a-year barrier for the first time, according to industry experts.

The Retail Price Index (RPI) rise for September is used by the Government to calculate the annual level of business rates, which are charged on all commercial premises in a similar way to council tax. The index rose 0.8 per cent year-on-year last month, despite the official measure of inflation, the Consumer Price Index (CPI), showing that the UK entered deflation. Rates bills will rise by the same amount, despite calls for several years by retailers and businesses for a rates freeze.

Although the rise is small compared with previous years, a £1,500 retail relief scheme will end in March, so the true rise in bills is 17.2 per cent.

Prices can only ever go up. Anything else would be a failure of growth.

[winkie]

....soon only the priverliged few will be able to go real shopping, for the rest to get out, it will be window shopping......to see what are missing out on.

[Guest_northshore_*]

For every £1 reduction in business rates landlords will raise the rent by £1, so it makes zero difference to operating costs and prices. Like council tax the incidence falls on landlords, therefore the BRC are making the usual call for cuts to taxes on landlords not businesses, whatever they claim.

http://www.ifs.org.uk/budgets/gb2014/gb2014_ch11.pdf
http://www.landecon.cam.ac.uk/pdf-files/cv/pete-tyler/Bond_Gardiner_Tylertaxincidence_article061211.pdf

Plus Government is 'reforming' business rates, which will probably result in the BRC and landlords getting what they want and even less efficient and more pro-landlord economic application for the rest of us regardless: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-paves-the-way-for-reform-of-business-rates

[anonguest]

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/high-street-shops-facing-huge-jump-in-business-taxes-next-april-a6699291.html

Prices can only ever go up. Anything else would be a failure of growth.

Great isn't it!? Tax increases are calculated using the, typically, higher rate RPI value....but salaries, etc are paid in line with the, typically, lower CPI value.

Proof positive that Joe Average is as thick as two planks for allowing this sort of rip off to continue.

[TheCountOfNowhere]

council tax not going up.

council taxation going up?

[stepho]

So whatever the councils gain in rates, the Starbucks of this world will deduct from other parts of their tax bill.

We'll be no better off as a whole but any independent that's not already shut up shop will be wiped out.

[Guest_northshore_*]

FT: A nation of shopkeepers in need of new taxation ideas Reproduced here - John Kay, former IFS Director: Lower business rates would benefit property owners not retailers

"...Business rates are not the cause of the pressure on retailers but they have become a convenient whipping boy. The retailers wielding that whip believe the business rates they pay are a tax on shopkeepers and perhaps shoppers. Mostly they are wrong. Business rates offer a textbook illustration of the distinction between the formal and effective incidence of a tax — the distinction between the person who has the legal liability for payment and the person who ends up out of pocket

...The corollary is that the main impact of business rates is on property values. If business rates in London were lower, rents and investment values of central London property would be higher. So if retailers had their way, and achieved substantial reduction in the rating burden, their joy would be shortlived: in the medium and longer term, the beneficiaries would be the owners of central London properties — real estate companies, pension funds, the Duke of Westminster and the Queen. In less desirable locations, however, business rates are a tax on building costs rather than land values."