Council Tax freeze - the other shoe drops

As mentioned last year oh how nice they're not charging us more for the reduced services and it even made it into the budget for our district. Yeah Council Tax isn't going up... just had the business rates bill. The standard multiplier has increased from 43.3p in the pound to 45.8p.

So along with the fact that Labour scrapped the void rates on industrial premises and the Coalition allowed the exemption threshold to drop to a pitiful value meaning so many landlords now need to pay who didn't before what a big surprise they're not raising council tax.

To crunch those numbers it's 43.3% of the rateable value increased to 45.8% which may seem a rise of 2.5% but is in fact a rise of 5.8%. But hey that's okay as it only applies to businesses. It's not as if they'll just charge customers more and there are plenty of new shops opening all the time around here to keep competition healthy even if they do.

How to keep the money coming in while keeping the electorate happy (and in the dark) - politics [spits]