Business Rates - It's your liability - Reduce it!
What is rateable value? Simply put, rateable value should reflect the open market rental value of a commercial property on the basis that the tenant pays for all repairs, insurances and other property related outgoings. However, as the Valuation Officer (VO) needs time to collate rental evidence, a specific date, the Antecedent Valuation Date (AVD), is used for analysis and in the case of the current 2010 rating list, this date is 1st April 2008.
This is bad news for many businesses. The 1st April 2008 valuation date means that current 2010 assessments are based on pre credit crunch rental evidence. Many lettings after this date have shown significantly lower levels of value.
This is where the problems start as the VO is tied to the AVD by legislation. However, the VO must also consider the material and physical circumstances of a location as at 1st April 2010 and determine what effect, if any, later physical changes to a location (e.g. excessive vacancies), would have had on the AVD values if the later circumstances had been in existence as at 1st April 2008.
As with all forms of taxation, there are procedures in place to allow rate payers to challenge their liability and any tenant, owner or person with an interest in a
non-domestic property is entitled to appeal against their assessment either personally or via an agent. A word of caution though: If upon inspecting the property, the VO concludes that the assessment of the appeal property is too low, there is a legislative burden on the VO to maintain a correct and fair rating list and therefore a duty to increase the assessment to the appropriate figure.
It is for this reason that any decision to appeal is carefully considered in the first instance. Professional advice is readily available but beware of cold call approaches. If something seems too good to be true, it usually is! You should not agree to pay fees up front, sign a contract which commits you to future rating lists, pay fees based on savings over a period longer than one rate year or allow appeals to be submitted without a pre-appeal investigation.
联络详情:
Gret Davenport
Tel: 0151 242 3070
Email: greg.davenport@masonowen.com