From The Daily Mail:
Helen Dickinson, chief executive of the British Retail Consortium, said: 'We welcome the continued commitment to a fundamental review of the business rates system and would like to see this formalised in the upcoming Budget.
'It would do far more to help relieve struggling high streets and safeguard jobs and communities than short-term discounts which will only impact some businesses but not all.
'The retail rates discount is just another sticking plaster that ducks the real crisis facing high streets especially in vulnerable areas of England already suffering from years of economic decline and falling rents.
Retailers aren't suffering from falling rents; their landlords are.
Thursday, 19 December 2019
The funny things that Home-Owner-Ists say...
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12 comments:
Wow!
What I'd like to see is any business rates reduction to be contingent on rent reduction. Imagine say an employee's NI reduction being allowed to be directly swallowed by an employer
It's quite beyond my comprehension as to why non-landlords cannot see the logic of higher business rates with no exemptions (including 'charity' shops) will result in lower rents? Especially if taxes on production are scrapped / reduced. All right, landlords have a vested interest, but everyone else doesn't.
M, exactly.
L, because of massive propaganda campaigns. Retailers refuse to accept they pay ten times as much VAT as they do Business Rates.
Maybe falling rents are a bad thing for retailers because the rules make it tempting for landlords to keep shops empty and hence bafflingly valued on their books at the last rent? Then the high street starts to look depressing. I can't believe that there isn't some sort of effort to eradicate empty shops. It's not like the strategy even works. The share prices of commercial landlords like Intu trade at a steep discount to what their valuations are because everyone knows it's a bunch of porkies. Ditto the banks that value their loans against the fibs
It will be a windfall for in place tenants, what will they spend it on.
I'm not sure about the high street narrative, some high streets have a lot of new Restaurants, but is that because people can afford to eat out and rents are higher than the would be otherwise.
M, re empty shops. In LVT world, the valuation agency just asks the owner of a vacant how much rent they expect/hope/would like to get, and makes them pay LVT accordingly. If they low ball, the council just rents it off them and sub-lets for the market value.
If they accept an actual tenant at a lower rent, then that gets averaged out with other actual rents being paid, and owners with tenanted shops (or owner-occupier businesses) pay LVT based on the actual average.
Din, they will spend it on higher rent.
Upwards only clauses rarely seem to get a mention when retailers are complaining. Who are these retailers who never notice the effects of rents? Are they owner-occupiers?
Ph, Mike Ashley is doing a fine job of negotiating rents down again. Landlords hate him.
@physiocrat while on the street marketing lvt, it was obvious the tenant traders were both stupid and more so, hoping their competition would go under before them.
For this exact reason, LVT is the most failing economic policy in all of history.
Why so? Because all people, want their own economy subsidised and that if everyone else taxed heavily.
It's probably time Georgism grasped this one. I'm not sure it has that level of wisdom though
When tenants say things that are so obviously wide of the mark, it does no harm to point this out if you have the time and energy. Once in a while it might even sink in. The mistake is to expect the message to be grasped more than occasionally.
Agreed. And so I did. The effect 99% of the time was the same kind of bitterness and spite.
Because, their only goal is to survive. The theory is meaningless to them.
Get it yet folks? If so, you are the wise ones
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