Business Rates Update- Notes from Meeting with Finance Minister
On 23rd November, Finance Minister Conor Murphy announced that manufacturers would be receiving a business rates holiday for the 2020/21 year. Earlier today we met with Minister Murphy to discuss how the scheme would be rolling out. This is a £20m scheme and expected to benefit some 4,500 manufacturing businesses.
The Minister confirmed the commitment and the necessary legislative power will be provided in early January. Land and Property Service will be writing to all manufacturing businesses then to outline the process and the necessary IT changes will be made to their systems. A portal will also be provided for appeals.
Both the Department of Finance and LPS want to make the system as simple and easy to administer as possible and have asked for our help. They are keen to know:
Would you be content for any payments made this year to be credited against your rates bill for 2021/22?
Or, does your business need this cash in the early part of 2021?
If your account is in arrears from previous years, are you content that anything paid in the current year could be written off against this?
We would really appreciate your feed back on the above questions soonest so we can provide a steer to the Minister. If you could email info@manufacturingni.org , we can collate the information and present it back to them.
The expectation is that LPS will be issuing you a cheque for money paid since August but do not expect this until February.
For now, you can take action. If you are paying your rates by Direct Debit or BACS, you can stop or pause these.