Tinkering with rates is  not helping business. So says the Institute of Fiscal Studies, a reputable think tank, which argues for land value taxation as a replacement for the UBR. Here is a link to an article in the Daily Telegraph. The original IFS report is here. It contains a detailed analysis of the system of business rates, discusses their economic impact and comes up with proposals for improvement....

A circular issued last month announced the government’s intention to put off the 2015 UBR revalution for two years. The circular says “The Government has announced its intention to postpone the next business rates revaluation in England to 2017. Primary legislation will be brought forward through the Growth and Infrastructure Bill which was laid before Parliament on 18 October 2012. “Business...

Croydon town centre has thrived since Tramlink opened in 2000. But now the retailers there are asking for a “rates holiday” and the foolish council seems as if it is going to take notice. Evidently, they have no understanding of a fundamental principal in economics, Ricardo’s Law of Rent.

We have heard more than a few times that we already have LVT in the form of the UBR. We have even come across this statement in government responses when we have put the LVT case. True, the Uniform Business Rate is a sort of land value tax, but a very poorly implemented one. Land in residential use is substantially exempt, being subject to the Council Tax instead. Vacant land is exempt. Agricultural...

A Report by Cambridge Econometrics for HM Treasury and HM Revenue and Customs concluded that 100% of the benefits from NNDR relief are passed into rents and therefore accrue to landlords, although the range of uncertainty surrounding this statistical estimate puts the boundary at somewhere between 65% and 150%. Either way, the general conclusion is that the majority of tax-saving benefits from NNDR...

The government has now designated all its new Enterprise Zones – a scatter of locations across the country where concessions include exemption from business rates and fast-tracking of planning applications. As with the Enterprise Zones in the 1980s, their main effect will be to generate some development and attract commercial activity, most of which would probably have gone somewhere else...

The government agency that determines business rates has said that it will take wireless broadband networks into account when conducting assessments. The move, by the Valuation Office Agency (VOA), has raised fears among owners of businesses that offer wi-fi access to customers, such as cafés and service stations, that they may have to pay higher rates. The agency said that its valuation officers...