Business Rates for Home Based Business?

[Stitch Up]

Like many on this forum, we run a small business from our home.

Most of our equipment is located in the conservatory but as we add more, it tends to encroach to the living areas too. In our case, it's become a problem and when a larger property came on the market nearby, we purchased it

20 years ago the 'new to us' property used to be a grocery shop at the front with living area behind and 4 bedrooms upstairs plus, a large garage/workshop. The grocer's shop literally shut its doors 20 + years ago and the owners didn't open them again! You can imagine the bad state it was in when we purchased it!!! Here's a couple of pictures:





Since these pictures were taken, the ceiling caved in and the floor gave way = nightmare!


Anyway, back to the subject.

When we complete work on the large room that once was 'the shop', we'll have enough space to place our equipment in that one room thereby completely divorcing it from the living areas :biggrin:

So, when does a home based business require to pay commercial/business rates? Both Angie or I have full time jobs and the business is still small.

Any information/comments?

Regards

John

[pisquee]

If you want to play things by the book, then call and ask the council - there may be an area on the council website to look up the rateable value of the premises if it's still on record.
But, for a small business, if the rateable value of a premises is under £6000 (can't remember the exact figure, think it's a little over the £6K) then you won't have to pay any rates anyway

[purpledragon]

John as pisquee says above it really depends on if you want to play by the rules . The council will come out measure the business area and charge accordingly . what may be of interest to you is as like me you are in wales and we are entitled to small business rate relief so im pretty sure you would get full relief (we do in our shop) this may be advantagous to you as you may well find your domestic rates go down because part of your home would be for business and with the small business relief you may not have to pay that part of it

[melridd]

When we had our guest house, we paid council tax on our part of the house and business rates on the guests part. The business rates were zero as we were entitled to small business rate relief. We also paid for metered water (only businesses do in Scotland) so the water rates element of our council tax was also removed.