Business Rates – here we go again

The government is launching yet another review of the Business Rate system, which is allegedly a burden on small businesses. So are rents, but that cannot be mentioned. How many studies have there been since Layfield’s in 1976?

In the meantime, the Chancellor could usefully look at what a study by Cambridge Econometrics, commissioned by the Treasury found when it looked at what happened when rates were abolished altogether, which happened in the Enterprise Zones in the early 1980s.