Paper on Business Rate reform sent to HM Treasury
A paper which largely draws on policy drafted by ALTER and approved by Party Conference in 2007 has been sent to HM Treasury's Commercial Property Tax Team, at their request. This followed a meeting in HM Treasury, attended by ALTER's Dr Tony Vickers, that was set up before the General Election by the cross-party Coalition for Economic Justice (CEJ). Subsequent to that meeting, CEJ wrote a pre-Budget submission to Chancellor George Osborne, copying the letter to Vince Cable.
The paper is available as a download (PDF) and ALTER would welcome comments on it. It is worth noting that Treasury seemed fully to understand and accept the economic arguments for LVT. Their concerns were to do with practicality and political acceptability. These concerns are addressed in the paper.