Publication
Horizon Scanning: Investigations and Enforcement
In this horizon scan, we focus on key developments affecting companies operating in the UK, including in light of the recent change in UK government.
Global | Publication | September 2016
In August 2016 the Valuation Office Agency (VOA) announced a revision to the way it calculates business rates where a tenant occupies separate spaces in an office or other non-domestic building.
The change may result in a considerable increase in the overall rates bill of affected tenants and is also retrospective.
Rates are a property tax assessed on the basis of the number of property units - hereditaments - occupied. The change in VOA practice has been prompted by the Supreme Court decision in Woolway-v-Mazars. The ratepayer in Mazars occupied the 2nd and 6th floors of an 8-storey office block, held under separate leases and linked by a series of central lifts located in the communal parts of the building. The question was whether the two floors under common occupation should be treated as one rateable unit or two.
The issue is significant as substantial quantum allowances may be available if the premises are assessed as a single unit, thus leading to a lower rates liability. Not surprisingly then, the ratepayer in Mazars claimed that the two floors should be treated as one rateable unit and claimed a quantum allowance of 10%. The valuation officer argued that non-adjoining floors occupied by the same occupier but linked only through communal areas, as in this case, should be treated as separate units.
The ratepayer lost and the Supreme Court declared that as the two floors did not adjoin and did not directly intercommunicate, they were two distinct taxable units. The Supreme Court also cast doubt on the VOA practice of treating all adjoining spaces linked only through common parts as one rateable unit.
The VOA has announced that, as a result of Mazars, it is legally obliged to treat as separate rateable units different areas in a building that are occupied by the same tenant but do not directly intercommunicate and are only linked through communal areas such as lifts and stairwells.
This is the case even if the separate areas adjoin, thus reversing its previous practice. For example two consecutive floors in a multi-let office building occupied by the same tenant and connected only by a communal lift were treated as one unit for business rates purposes but will now be treated as two. However if the separate spaces do directly interconnect, for example by private internal lift or stairs, they will be treated as one unit. Further, a building with numerous floors all leased separately to a single occupier will be assessed as one unit even if the only access to each floor is through communal areas.
Publication
In this horizon scan, we focus on key developments affecting companies operating in the UK, including in light of the recent change in UK government.
Publication
On 3 September 2024, the ECJ delivered its judgment in Illumina’s appeal against the General Court’s (GC) judgment confirming the European Commission’s (EC) powers to review concentrations under the EU Merger Regulation (EUMR) in circumstances where no Member State has jurisdiction under national law.
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