{"id":507509,"date":"2026-04-01T18:18:11","date_gmt":"2026-04-01T18:18:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/507509\/"},"modified":"2026-04-01T18:18:11","modified_gmt":"2026-04-01T18:18:11","slug":"call-for-business-rates-reform-as-scots-face-cost-of-living-crunch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/507509\/","title":{"rendered":"Call for business rates reform as Scots face cost of living crunch"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The Scottish government sets business rates, called non-domestic rates, though the tax is collected by councils to fund local services. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The levy is charged on business properties such as shops, offices, factories and warehouses, with the rate based on their rental value. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">As of 1 April, new rateable values have been introduced for all 260,000 rated non-domestic properties in Scotland, leading to a tax hike for many firms.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Concerns have also been raised about a spike in fuel prices and energy bills due to the crisis in the Middle East.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Gavin Boyle is operations manager at Wunderbar, a live-music bar which has two venues in Glasgow and employs 130 staff. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He told BBC Scotland News that the company&#8217;s business rates on its city centre bar were increasing from \u00a3111,000 a year to \u00a3645,000, and said the only way to make cuts was to let staff go. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Scottish government sets business rates, called non-domestic rates, though the tax is collected by councils to fund&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":507510,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[84,1294,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-507509","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-economy","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507509","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=507509"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507509\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/507510"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=507509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=507509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=507509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}