Business rates

Non-Domestic Rates or Business Rates

Non-Domestic Rates, or Business Rates, collected by local authorities are the way that those who occupy non-domestic property contribute towards the cost of local services.  Except in the City of London where special arrangements apply, the rates are pooled by central government and redistributed to local authorities as part of the annual formula grant settlement.  The money, together with revenue from council tax payers, revenue support grant provided by the Government and certain other sums, is used to pay for the services provided by your local authority and other local authorities in your area.

Rateable Value

Apart from properties that are exempt from Business Rates, each non-domestic property has a rateable value which is set by the valuation officers of the Valuation Office Agency (VOA), an agency of Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs.  They draw up and maintain a full list of all rateable values, available on their website at http://www.voa.gov.uk/

National Non-Domestic Rating Multiplier

The local authority works out the Business Rates bill by multiplying the rateable value of the property by the appropriate multiplier.  There are two multipliers; the standard non-domestic rating multiplier and the small business non-domestic rating multiplier.  The former is higher to pay for small business rate relief.  Except in the City of London where special arrangements apply, the Government sets the multipliers for each financial year for the whole of England according to formulae set by legislation.  Between revaluations the multipliers change each year in line with inflation and to take account of the cost of small business rate relief.  In the year of revaluation the multipliers are rebased to account for overall changes to total rateable value and to ensure that the revaluation does not raise extra money for Government.  

The current multipliers for the 2010 – 2011 Financial Year are as follows:

Standard Non-Domestic Rating Muliplier = 41.4p

Small Business Non-Domestic Rating Multiplier = 40.7p

Useful Websites

Business Link