Scotland's Economy
Business rates review
July 13, 2016 by Ken Barclay 2 Comments | Category Economy
Ken Barclay who is leading the business rates review group
Ken Barclay who is leading the Scottish Government’s review of business rates announces the remaining members of the group and calls for businesses to submit their ideas to reform the current system.
“I am very happy to head up the Scottish Government’s review of business rates alongside a talented team. The group members are, Isobel d’Inverno, Professor Russel Griggs, David Henderson and Nora Senior. This is a highly skilled team with significant experience in areas including entrepreneurship, tax, banking and investment, local and national government.
“As a group we will consider how business rates can respond to wider economic conditions and support business growth and long-term investment.
“Our aim is to bring forward recommendations that seek to enhance and reform the system to better support business growth and reflect changing marketplaces whilst still maintaining the level of income necessary to provide funding for services upon which businesses rely. We have no doubt that this will prove to be a challenging task but I believe collectively we have the ability to make the most of this opportunity.
“To help us achieve this task I would urge all businesses to make their views known on the way forward for our rates system. For the next three months we will be asking businesses, large and small, across the length and breadth of Scotland to contribute to our conversation so we can design a solution together. The period for submissions will end on 7 October 2016 and more information can be found here www.gov.scot/businessrates.”
All submissions and enquiries should be emailed to ratesreview@gov.scot
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As a considerable contributor to the rates system I feel strongly that a fairer method of calculating rates liability is needed.
Quite simply if every business paid some contribution then it would reduce the burden for occupiers of larger premises.
Businesses occupying smaller premises are quite often more profitable than similar businesses with larger premises who often employ more staff and have higher maintenance costs but are not necessarily more profitable.
The current system offers no encouragement for smaller businesses to expand, employ more staff or move into larger premises
As a relatively small company (50 employees and £3.5M sales) we have recently moved into a larger workshop (56,000 sqft) to enable long term growth. We are now very nervous that increasing business rates will put another major burden on the company that we might not recover from. We are already on a tightrope with the collapsing oil and gas industry which we have been reliant on for almost all of our revenues. It seems the way the Scottish Government is taking us, unfairly penalises businesses which need larger premises to do their business (such as manufacturing) when a fairer way might be related to profits and / or turnover. There will be many highly profitable businesses working in a virtual space (office and internet based) who will be liable for minimal business rates because of the physical attributes of their premises. Manufacturers need more government help – not more taxes to pay !