Solar Industry Objects To Paying Rates
By Paul Homewood
The solar industry is whingeing about rates increases due in April. This follows the latest business rates revaluation.
The whole system of business rates is highly controversial since it taxes businesses effectively on the value of their property rather than profits or turnover.
The last revaluation was pegged to 2008 values, when solar panels were still in their infancy. As a result, rate valuations either ignored or grossly undervalued the cost of panels.
Unfortunately the Valuation Office Agency has now caught up with matters, and wants to properly reflect the value of solar systems.
While this does not apply to private dwellings, it simply puts businesses on to a level playing field with other electricity generators.
Without a sense of shame, while claiming that solar power will soon become the cheapest form of generation, the Solar Trade Association say that the changes will make it uneconomic to install solar!
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
You can hear the pigs squealing as the trough is drained.
http://www.solar-trade.org.uk/business-rates-rooftop-solar-increase/
http://www.solarpowerportal.co.uk/keywords/86-business-rates
What a shame. Greenpeace are not happy. http://www.cleanenergynews.co.uk/news/solar/chancellor-silent-on-solar-business-rates-in-srping-budget
What else to these greedy subsidy farmers expect when they change productive land to a power station? Oink Oink!
…and productive roof tops!
I saw the term SNOUTERS used the other day. I wonder who it referred to?
“the Solar Trade Association say that the changes will make it uneconomic to install solar!”
oooh dear please excuse me………………but…..ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha,ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha,ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha,ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha,ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha,ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, and then some ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.
Photo voltaic arrays to “power Britain” – I’m not sure which is the funnier line.
Ruinables, will mean the death of manufacturing in Britain, then what the fuck do we do?
We all become part voluntarily or no.
Of the: great Marxist plan and wet dream of Corbyn and his Stasi – Mao tried it, Lenin and Stalin with the Kolkhoz, Pol Pot in Cambodia………………. the great Marxist Agrarian wet dream and fuck the people.
The Solar industry need not worry. This cost will all wind up on our electricity bills as an increase to the energy stealth tax.
“While this does not apply to private dwellings”……….
Medieval Council Tax is calculated on the value of a property.
So any future revaluations, how ever unlikely, could take the value of the panels into account as they are fixed to the property !
Can you imagine the fury if it tips households into higher bands !
An excellent “progressive” taxation, those with solar panels can probably well afford to pay it.
Oh that would be so funny. After all, they are causing an increase in everyone else’s energy costs. It has gone quiet on the suggestion of a grid access fee for those who generate their own electricity to cover their reduced contributions to grid maintenance.
Why does this remind of the Purple Bricks ad where the house seller screams into a cupboard: ‘Commisery!’? Must be a version of that word that applies to solar farmers….
Yet another current advert – this time for the Six Nations – offers a parallel. In the ad for the Irish team a female supporter offers this fact: “We [the Irish] invented the submarine, and built the Titanic!” One and the same thing, surely?
And I thought it was an American who invented the submarine, unless this is more of the undoubted ability at literature and humour of the Irish.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Philip_Holland
This is great news!
Listen to the little green piggies squeal as they are ripped from the subsidy teat.
800% headline is fishy
800% from what ? If the tax was £1 now it’s £8
but the article says ” currently exempt ” ..so the actual price rise is infinity%
Anyway I don’t think this is new … I posted the other week that schools with not charitable status will be hit by the abolition of the special let off.
I think it’s safe to predict that “charities” will make an appearance in this game….
There is already a business rates avoidance scheme on empty properties that exploits charity status – expect some enterprising lawyers to draft up something that gets panels zero’d ….
There’s farmers around here coining it without paying business rates on their STOR generators I suspect…
If anybody’s got a few spare minutes and knows of a local STOR scheme – check if it’s registered for business rates…. I have a suspicion that if the generators are skid mounted – they are classed as “mobile” and thus not taxed…..
The whole system of business rates is highly controversial since it taxes businesses effectively on the value of their property rather than profits or turnover.
Unless it’s a pub, in which case it’s taxed on both. And people wonder why pubs are shutting.
+1
There seems to be a movement to turn pubs into charities – via Community Interest Companies – rural pub / post office / convenience stores as charities anyone?
I have long thought that local councils, whose objection to wind turbines are over-ridden by planning stooges, should rate the whole of a farm as industrial area. Might alter the economics slightly.
“…Energy is the lifeblood of the economy. The primary objective of the energy sector is to supply cost-effective energy to the broader economy, allowing it to grow and increase the standard of living of its citizens.
Artificially pumping up employment in the energy sector per se – and thereby driving down productivity, while driving up costs to the broader economy – is counterproductive to overall net job creation and economic growth. It is a sign of increased efficiency if more energy can be produced and delivered with fewer workers, because this expands the overall output potential of the economy…”
Every TWh of [intermittent] electricity delivered by solar pv takes 80X the number of man-hours than the [24/7] electricity delivered by a nuclear power plant:
http://prismsuk.blogspot.co.uk/2017/02/wind-and-solar-power-drain-lifeblood.html