LONDON (Reuters) -British finance minister Rachel Reeves on Wednesday committed to lower business rates for high street stores to help “level the playing field” with their online rivals.
Predominantly bricks-and-mortar retailers have for years complained that business rates – a property tax charged on most commercial properties to fund local services – are archaic and hand an unfair cost advantage to online retailers such as Amazon.
Labour had pledged in its election manifesto to redress the balance to help revive town centres.
Delivering her first budget plan, Reeves said that from 2026-27 permanently lower tax rates for retail, hospitality and leisure properties would be introduced.
She said the change would be funded by introducing a higher multiplier for the most valuable properties, including distribution warehouses used by “online giants”.
Shops, cafes and pubs in England also got a reprieve from a jump in business rates next year with Reeves extending a relief scheme introduced during the COVID pandemic.
She announced 40% relief for eligible retail, hospitality and leisure businesses, up to a cap of 110,000 pounds ($143,000) per business.
According to trade groups UKHospitality and the British Retail Consortium, high street businesses pay more than one third of the business rates collected every year, amounting to almost 9 billion pounds, far more than the sector’s 9% contribution to the overall economy.
The bosses of pubs groups Fuller’s, Greene King, JD Wetherspoon, Stonegate and Young’s and brands like Burger King, Caffe Nero and KFC were named as supporters of a campaign to extend relief ahead of the budget.
Sainsbury’s, Britain’s second-largest supermarket group after Tesco, has complained that it currently pays almost as much tax on its properties as it makes in operating profit.
($1 = 0.7694 pounds)
(Reporting by Paul Sandle and James Davey, editing by Michael Holden and Hugh Lawson)
