Even Bond can’t escape empty rates tax
THE film studio behind the latest James Bond blockbuster is the latest big name to throw its weight behind a campaign against the controversial “bombsite Britain” empty rates tax.
More than 130 MPs have signed Commons motions calling for the tax to be axed while a petition is being launched against it today.
And it has been revealed that Columbia Pictures Corporation, the studio behind Quantum of Solace, is appealing against a £130,000 bill for empty property rates.
The film studio has taken the Valuation Office Agency, which collects the tax, to a Lands Tribunal. It is appealing against a £130,000 rates bill on its headquarters in West London, which it had to pay while it was being refurbished at a cost of £2.8m.
The petition calling for the scrapping of the tax is being launched by Kent Conservative candidate Laura Sandys at http://petitions.number10.gov.uk/emptythreat/
It follows an open letter to Gordon Brown highlighting that before the tax was introduced in April, firms received business rate relief at 50% for empty offices and shops and 100% for warehouses and factories.
The British Property Federation, which has led the national campaign against empty rates, has criticised the way in which the tax penalises those who upgrade buildings to reduce their environmental impact.
BPF chief executive Liz Peace said: “Empty rates are a terrible example of how disjointed the government is. Taxing empty buildings is totally at odds with government policy over helping business, promoting flexible leasing and sustainability. The long term costs of raising £1bn in empty rates will be immeasurable. Firms will be forced into bankruptcy through paying tax on properties earning then nothing, while the forced demolition of perfectly usable buildings will mean less affordable space for new businesses when we come out of recession.”
Steve Thomas, head of rating, Montagu Evans, Columbia’s surveyors, said: “Since the abolition of empty rates relief in April of this year, the VOA appears to be reticent to delete assessments of buildings undergoing genuine works which would have been deleted without question only a couple of years ago.”
From April this year businesses have had to pay full business rates on empty buildings, even if they have no tenants or have only recently been completed. Shops and offices now get just three months’ relief while industrial properties get six months. Before April, shops and offices paid 50% rates while industrial properties paid nothing.
Halifax MP Linda Riordan, who placed an early day motion in the summer, said: “Locally, we have been hit very hard by empty rates. It is vital for the people and businesses of Halifax that full rate relief for empty property is applied immediately.”
