Labour wants credit for “reforming” business rates. From April 2026 the system was carved into five separate multipliers, supposedly to protect the high street. Look closely and you find the familiar trick of British taxation: move the money around, call it fairness, and quietly keep the total burden exactly where it is — sky high.

Five Multipliers, One Result: More Complexity

Here is the new landscape. Small retail, hospitality and leisure properties with a rateable value under £51,000 pay a 38.2p multiplier. Standard RHL premises between £51,000 and £499,999 pay 43p. And anything with a rateable value of £500,000 or more is hit with a 50.8p large-property multiplier. The revenue from clobbering the big premises is what pays for the lower rate on the small ones. In other words, this is not tax relief — it is a transfer dressed up as generosity.

There is a 15 per cent relief for pubs and live music venues, which is welcome as far as it goes. But a discount on a punishingly high bill is not the same as a competitive tax system. It is a sticking plaster on a self-inflicted wound.

Punishing the Employers We Need Most

That 50.8p multiplier on larger properties is the part that should worry anyone who cares about jobs. The anchor stores, the bigger employers, the distribution sites that keep towns alive — these are precisely the businesses now facing the steepest bills. You do not rebuild the high street by taxing the largest job-creators on it harder. Squeeze the anchor tenant and the smaller units around it lose footfall too.

British businesses are already leaving or scaling back under the weight of the overall tax burden. Adding a new top multiplier sends exactly the wrong signal to anyone deciding whether to invest in Britain or somewhere with a friendlier regime.

The Burden Never Actually Falls

This is the heart of it. Labour reshuffles who pays what, but the total taken from business stays at near-record levels. Genuine reform would mean a smaller state spending less, so that rates could come down for everyone rather than being robbed from Peter to subsidise Paul. Instead we get more bands, more bureaucracy, and more accountants needed to work out which one you fall into.

What Reform UK Would Do

Reform UK would cut the burden, not just rearrange it. We would lift the threshold at which businesses pay rates at all, freeing thousands of small firms entirely, and we would fund it by stripping out waste rather than taxing larger employers into retreat. A high street recovers when entrepreneurs can afford to take a unit, hire staff, and keep more of what they earn.

The test of a tax reform is simple: did the bill go down? For most businesses under Labour’s new system, the honest answer is no.