Small business rate relief tips (3rd May 2019)

Your business will qualify for small business rate relief if:

• your business premises has a rateable value is less than £15,000
• your business only occupies one property – you may still qualify for relief if your business uses more thank one property but the discount is significantly smaller.

You must contact your local council to apply for small business rate relief. This is important, often the discount is not automatically applied by councils meaning that business are often charged unnecessarily.

What discount will your business receive?

Your business will not pay business rates on a property with a rateable value of £12,000 or less.

For properties with a rateable value of £12,001 to £15,000, the rate of relief will go down gradually from 100% to 0%.

Examples

If your rateable value is £13,500, you’ll get 50% off your bill. If your rateable value is £14,000, you’ll get 33% off.

If your business occupies more than one property

When your business expands into a second commercial property, you will continue to receive any existing relief on your main property for 12 months.

Businesses will still be able to get small business rate relief on your main property after this period if both the following apply:

• none of your other properties have a rateable value above £2,899
• the total rateable value of all your properties is less than £20,000 (£28,000 in London)

You’re a small business but do not qualify for small business rate relief

If your property in England has a rateable value below £51,000, your bill will be calculated using the small business multiplier, which is lower than the standard one. This is the case even if you do not get small business rate relief.

The small business multiplier is 49.1p and the standard multiplier is 50.4p from 1 April 2019 to 31 March 2020. The multipliers may be different in the City of London.

For further information please contact your local council.

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