We are alerted to this insistence by the Senior Lecturer at Islington Technical College. The underlying point being made is that government are entire, total and complete idiots.
[perfectpullquote align=”full” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””] Private hospitals are not businesses but charities so are unsurprisingly exempt from business rates. Yet surely NHS hospitals are not businesses either? It is another example of a purposely skewed unlevel playing field where the NHS is looked upon to ‘compete’ with private hospitals but with automatically higher overheads. It is contrived legislation. [/perfectpullquote]The complaint is that NHS hospitals pay business rates. Private – and charitable – hospitals do not pay business rates. From here:
[perfectpullquote align=”full” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””] And all this legal action is basically the government suing itself because they all think that money is short. Deception and misunderstanding is complete. Even branches of government don’t seem to realise who creates money. And if the government fails to resource local authorities adequately as it is now doing, local authorities might be even worse off. And all the idiots in government can talk about is Brexit. They seem unaware that charity begins at home. [/perfectpullquote]And from here:
[perfectpullquote align=”full” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””] A total of 17 Trusts will go to court to argue they should get the same discount as charities for rates bills on their hospitals More than a dozen NHS Trusts are taking the Government to court to argue that they should have an 80% reduction in business rates – the same discount given to private hospitals and fee-paying schools. [/perfectpullquote]Hmm.
[perfectpullquote align=”full” bordertop=”false” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]Hospitals in England and Wales will pay a combined £408.6 million in business rates this year – a rise of 42.8% since 2017 when the Government carried out a revaluation of all commercial premises, research by rates specialists Altus Group.[/perfectpullquote]So, imagine the case is made and won. NHS hospitals will no longer pay business rates or will gain that charitable rate. What happens next? The central government budget for the NHS is cut by 80% of £408.6 million of course. For what is part of that NHS budget currently? The need to pay business rates at full whack of course.
At which point, think what the lefty insistence is here. Central government doesn’t include business rates in the costs that it gives the NHS the money to pay. That’s the only way you can possibly get to the position that if the NHS didn’t pay business rates then the NHS would have more money. If the budget didn’t allow for those costs.
So, think a little more. The left is here insisting that central government is run by entire and complete idiots. Who cannot compose a budget to include obvious costs like business rates. These same lefties being the ones who insist that these entire and complete idiots must be responsible for ever more of our lives. Way to go on the logic there, eh?
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I'm happy to accept that government are idiots for charging business rates on themselves and then having to have all the cost incurred of doing the valuations and collecting of that revenue.
I'm also happy to assume that business rates may well not be an explicit line item exposed to the treasury when computing how much money to give the NHS (it'll be part of fabric running costs or whatever), so they may well not be explicitly reasoning over it. Lastly how efficient and rapid do you think the bureaucracy would actually be in 'correcting' the budget if another department changes the rules and lets the NHS keep the money? Its not like the money requested from the treasury will go down by that amount as there will be other things that the NHS will allocate that money to (such as fixing the crumbling buildings which may well be included in the same line item).
If it's like school budgets Rates is a specific line item.
So that's what, a day and half's expenditure by the NHS?
NHS hospitals shouldn't get the same tax status as charities, they should get the same tax status as *hospitals*.
PS: My Town Council is still waiting for the government to legislate its promise to remove public toilets from rating. Prudently, we haven't actually budgeted to not pay rates on 'em, but we have sort-a predicated future plans on fairly soon not paying rates on 'em.