James Moore: The business rate ‘review’ is just another pre-election stunt

Unsurprisingly this has done little to stop firms caught in a business-rate trap — the tax counts as the biggest single expense for some — from screaming blue murder.

The problem faced by any future administration is how you proceed with reform when whatever comes out of the review is intended to be fiscally neutral.

Corporation tax — which hits profits — has been progressively cut and is, anyway, rather easy to get around.

So business rates have become an increasingly important part of the tax take from the corporate sector.

If you give the High Street a break via a fiscally neutral reform then someone’s going to have to pay for it.

Fine, you might say, nobody’s going to cry if Amazon, with its out-of-town aircraft hangers built in places where rateable value are low, gets hit. It’s one of those companies that proved corporation tax can be entirely optional for big multinationals with clever accountants.

But a system that hits Amazon might well end up hitting someone you’d like to encourage. Like a manufacturer, for example.

They also tend to live in low rateable value areas. When you’re competing with China you don’t have a lot of choice.

So, with no consensus on the way forward for business rates, don’t expect anything remotely radical to come of this review beyond a bit of tinkering. Its announcement is just yet another cynical, pre-election stunt.