Tag Archives: business rates

Mark Valladares

21 February 2019 – yesterday’s press releases

By Mark Valladares | Fri 22nd February 2019 - 11:06 pm

Apologies to all for last night’s failure to file. It didn’t mean that there weren’t any, more that I was engaged in a bout of constitution wrangling and lost track of time. So, without further ado…

Cable: Govt must level the playing field between the high street and online

Responding to the report by the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee calling on the Government to consider the options of an online sales tax and reforms to business rates, Leader of the Liberal Democrats Vince Cable said:

While our high streets are going through an extremely difficult time, with the right action from

…

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Kirsten Johnson

Towards a level playing field between the high street and online

By Kirsten Johnson | Thu 21st February 2019 - 8:00 am

I welcome the report by the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee, High Streets and Town Centres in 2030, which calls on the Government to consider the options of an online sales tax and reforms to business rates.

It states:

We believe that high streets and town centres can survive, and thrive, by 2030 if they adapt. Our vision is for activity-based community gathering places where retail is a smaller part of a wider range of uses and activities and where green space, leisure, arts and culture and health and social care services combine with housing to create a space based on social and community interactions.

I spoke at a local business breakfast in Barnstaple recently. I was asked, “How can we revive the high street with online retailers undercutting our businesses?”  and “How can we make it fairer for high street businesses?” Local business owners wanted to know more about our policy to reform business rates – I told them about our proposal to abolish business rates and replace them with a Commercial Landowner Levy. But that wasn’t enough for them – they wanted to know about online sales tax and how we could level the playing field.

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Mark Valladares

21-30 December 2018 – press release catch-up

By Mark Valladares | Sun 30th December 2018 - 10:30 pm

You’d been wondering where I’d gotten to, hadn’t you? Well, following some consideration of how this regular feature works, I’ve decided to change it a bit. From now on, I’ll publish on Monday to Thursday inclusive, and on Sunday evening. My thinking is that politics goes a bit quiet when Parliament isn’t sitting, and one can develop a false expectation as to the flow of press releases from that.

And now, a catch up of press releases you’ve probably missed…

  • Lib Dem call to scrap Vagrancy Act gets Labour backing
  • Cable: Corbyn offers no real alternative
  • Govt must take no deal off the table

…

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Mark Valladares

27 October 2018 – today’s press release

By Mark Valladares | Sat 27th October 2018 - 10:48 pm

Cable: Broken business rates system should be abolished

Leader of the Liberal Democrats Vince Cable has warned the Chancellor’s business rates relief is nothing more than “hand-to-mouth support” and has called for the broken business rates system to be abolished.

Liberal Democrat leader Vince Cable said:

The UK high street is suffering the worst year on record, with in-store sales falling and hundreds of thousands of jobs lost.

While I welcome any relief, hand-to-mouth support for businesses simply isn’t sustainable. Liberal Democrats demand better. There needs to be a fundamental change to the system.

We must create a level playing field

…

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The Voice

The party proposes to abolish business rates: “Taxing Land, Not Investment”

By The Voice | Thu 30th August 2018 - 8:00 am

The party has just published a comprehensive blueprint for replacing the broken business rates system.

Ground-breaking research was led by Andrew Dixon, founder of the Lib Dem Business and Entrepreneurs Network (LDBEN), in response to mounting concerns about the negative impact of business rates on struggling high street businesses and the wider economy.

The report – “Taxing Land, Not Investment” – calls for the abolition of business rates and its replacement with a tax on land values, the Commercial Landowner Levy (CLL). The levy would remove buildings and machinery from calculations and tax only the land value of commercial sites, boosting investment and cutting taxes for businesses in nine out of ten English local authorities.

Andrew Dixon said,

By only taxing land and not the productive capital above it, this reform would remove a major disincentive to investment, boosting productivity and contributing to a necessary revival in UK industry. While separate action is needed to ensure online retailers pay their fair share of corporation tax, our proposals would offer a lifeline to struggling high streets.

I am delighted to support this initiative which I believe would boost business and enterprise across the UK, and I am grateful to members of the Liberal Democrats Business & Entrepreneurs Network for their valuable contributions to this important research.

Key recommendations of the report include:

  • Business rates should be abolished and replaced by a Commercial Landowner Levy based on the value of commercial land only
  • The levy should be paid by owners rather than tenants
  • Non-residential stamp duty should be scrapped to improve the efficiency of the commercial property market
  • Commercial land should be taxed regardless of whether the buildings above it are occupied; the tax should also apply to unused and derelict commercial land

The report also finds that:

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David Beavan

Live and campaign in an area with a lot of second homes?

By David Beavan | Mon 16th April 2018 - 8:12 am

East Suffolk Liberal Democrats are campaigning against a loophole that allows second home owners to avoid paying rates by saying they are businesses. A second home, that is available for holiday lets for 140 days a year (they don’t have to actually let it, except in Wales!), can claim to be a business for rates, and all properties of less than £12,000 valuation receive 100% small business rate relief – so they pay nothing. (NB this is not the same as Furnished Holiday Lets.)

In Southwold, more than half the houses are second homes and local people are priced out of …

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Chris White

Time to speak out against business rates

By Chris White | Mon 20th February 2017 - 7:05 pm

Margaret Thatcher nationalised the business rates because she felt local councils could not be trusted to work sensibly with local businesses. At around the same time she introduced the community charge in place of domestic rates, which morphed into the less regressive – but still considerably regressive – council tax.

Liberal Democrats have agonised over the latter and our policy is still to introduce a Local Income Tax, instantly handing the tabloids an easy stick with which to beat us – the Lib Dems want a chancellor in every town hall and plan to increase our taxes. The policy is right …

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Mark Hofman

Opinion: Transport – time for a home-working revolution?

By Mark Hofman | Mon 31st October 2011 - 7:45 am

The weekend is often over in the blink of an eye, and come Monday morning it’s off to work for the masses. The daily commute, whether it be by any means of transport, is often chaotic, crowded and frankly rather unpleasant for many.

It is a self – evident truth that our transport network is overcrowded. Even now with unemployment rates not seen for a generation, many of us will struggle for hours every day to travel to our respective workplaces.

Can the government help?

The government could assist by offering business rate reductions for employers willing to facilitate their employees working from home.

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Andrew Stunell MP

Andrew Stunell MP writes: Re-localisation of business rates will give councils real financial freedom

By Andrew Stunell MP | Tue 19th July 2011 - 2:21 pm

Yesterday’s announcement of our plan to re-localise business rates is one of the most significant reforms announced by the Coalition so far. Ok, not as newsworthy as the phone hacking scandal, but it’s big news for local democracy nonetheless. It marks another fundamental shift from central control to local responsibility.

Under the current local government funding system, Whitehall dishes out grant allocations to councils each year based on an incomprehensible formula that is far too complex and lacking in transparency. Most of this money is funded by the business rates, collected locally, but funnelled centrally, and then reallocated. Councils are left at the whim of the formula-setter in Whitehall, and there is no incentive to promote business growth either. All you get are the extra HGVs, but none of the rates income! All this is about to change.

So what are the main things that Liberal Democrats need to know?

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