Council owed £4.5m in unpaid business rates

NEW figures reveal Dundee City Council is owed £4.5 million in unpaid business rates.

Business rates, also called non-domestic rates, are a tax on business properties to help pay for local council services, and are calculated based on the rental value of each building.

For 2015-16, the most recent financial year, £4,535,459.25 was outstanding.

In every year since 2011-12, the council has been owed at least £3.5m come the end of the tax year, and in 2014-15 was owed more than £5m.

A spokesman for the Federation of Small Businesses, which offers not-for-profit small business advice, said the figure would likely frustrate businesses who do pay up.

He said: “If you were a mid-sized business and you saw other businesses not paying rates, you would be frustrated.

“One of the main reasons for the significant figure is likely to be that when a business goes into administration, the council becomes one of a number of creditors looking to retrieve the money it is owed.”

Business rates are charged on most non-domestic and commercial properties, including shops, offices, pubs and hotels, warehouses, and factories.

A Dundee City Council spokesman said: “We try to encourage as many businesses as possible to pay by making it easy for them to do so, for example by direct debit or by paying online.

“We have a legal duty to do everything we can to recover outstanding debt.

“We take the issue of debt recovery very seriously.”