By Ros Morgan

Businesses breathed a sigh of relief when, before the election, Labour declared scrapping business rates as its top priority on tax.

It even included a commitment to replace them in its general election manifesto.

At their heart, business rates are a blunt tax on property occupation. Local councils use a property’s rateable value - essentially its estimated open-market rental value - multiplied by a tax rate set by central government to calculate what a business owes.

Successive governments have promised and failed to reform the system to address a manifest unfairness: property-light online businesses pay far less, while traditional bricks-and-mortar businesses bear the brunt.

So there was widespread dismay among my members when, in last month's Budget, the Chancellor ducked the challenge. Instead of fundamental reform, we got more tinkering with the existing system.

From April next year, almost every commercial business in England and Wales will face a recalculation of its rateable value as part of the routine three-year revaluation cycle. The Government’s partial package - lowering retail, hospitality and leisure multipliers for properties valued at under £500,000, funded by a higher........

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