Business rates and the British high street

[Sandydragon]

Property taxes are quite hard to avoid. Hence why a number of people want to increase them in individuals, whilst apparently simultaneously wanting to decrease them on businesses.

As I understand it business rates income is going to be increasingly kept by local councils, and local councils are going to have increased ability to vary them giving them a direct stake in keeping their high streets full of businesses. Lambeth shows how this can work. Old covered markets have been rejuvenated by giving rates holidays to start ups and then rates become payable when businesses establish themselves. This is of course not without controversy.

But isn't that a few years away? In the interim, how many businesses will go under? For some reason, in Wales the increase isn't even being staggered which is totally insane.

[Eugene Wrayburn]

Property taxes are quite hard to avoid. Hence why a number of people want to increase them in individuals, whilst apparently simultaneously wanting to decrease them on businesses.

As I understand it business rates income is going to be increasingly kept by local councils, and local councils are going to have increased ability to vary them giving them a direct stake in keeping their high streets full of businesses. Lambeth shows how this can work. Old covered markets have been rejuvenated by giving rates holidays to start ups and then rates become payable when businesses establish themselves. This is of course not without controversy.

As mentioned earlier in the thread, having a locally collected portion of profit based tax would encourage councils to help businesses be more profitable. I mentioned parking charges in city centres as an example.

That's going to be horrifically difficult to collect. The shenanigans we get with the likes of Starbucks declaring all their profits in the Netherlands or Luxembourg or wherever will be even easier to do in a single country. That's assuming that they even collect the data on profit per store as opposed to income per store.