Wetherspoon and Business Rates Reform

J D WETHERSPOON PLC

17th March 2026

J D WETHERSPOON PLC

Let's Agree a Simple Message on Business Rates

By Tim Martin

Wetherspoon, Fuller's, St Austell, Shepherd Neame and many other family brewers backed Jacques Borel's campaign for approximate VAT equality with supermarkets a dozen or so years ago.

The failure of Jacques' campaign in the UK, in contrast to great success elsewhere in the world, was testament to the irrationality and disunity of most of the upper echelons of the UK's licensed trade in matters of taxation.

For reasons best known to themselves, probably connected to political allegiance to the then government, Enterprise Inns, Greene King and trade newspaper the Morning Advertiser poured scorn on Jacques' VAT campaign, helping to ensure its failure.

Both Greene King and Enterprise Inns now have different, and more business savvy, managements which, no doubt, see the error of their predecessors' disastrous policies- both companies' pubs, in common with the rest of the pub industry, have lost vast swathes of their beer trade to supermarkets in recent years.

However, supporters of Jacques will have suffered a frisson of anxiety when Greene King, on a frolic of their own, launched a campaign for business rates reform last summer- to some of us, it didn't quite add up.

Greene King's main pitch was to base business rates on a pub's profit, rather than on sales, or "fair maintainable trade", in the jargon of valuation experts.

Wetherspoon sympathises with Greene King's desire to find a formula which takes into account the vast reduction in pub profitability and sales in recent decades, but we query their chosen methodology.

If rateable values were to be based on profits, rather than trade, the existing knowledge and education of business rates experts, acting on behalf of the government, but also for licensees, would need to be replaced by the more complex and expensive expertise of the accountancy profession.

Traditionally, and at great expense, accountants are called upon when the profits of businesses require close examination.

Greene King's advocacy of profit-based business rates is also at odds with the principle of a property tax, which is based on the value of the property itself, rather than on the circumstances of the tenant occupying the property.

Indeed, businesses already have a tax based on profits: corporation tax. A second tax based on profits seems bureaucratic and illogical.

Rather than embarking on the complex path of a brand-new rating system, which is bound to be expensive to implement, and which will involve many "unknown unknowns", our suggestion is to keep it simple.

Currently, business rates are assessed on the fair maintainable trade of a hypothetical tenant occupying the property in question, to which a "multiplier" is applied.

The multiplier is currently 43 pence in the pound and many in the pub industry, including Greene King, have campaigned for a reduction of 15 pence to 28 pence.

Almost everyone, including probably the government, agrees that pubs are overtaxed. 

A reduction of the multiplier has the massive advantage of being easy to understand, easy to implement, and thereby provides a bona fide cash benefit to pubs.

This contrasts with the inherent uncertainty and delay in calling for a new system of business rates- which would bring zero guarantee of genuinely lower taxes for pubs, even if Greene King's formula were adopted.

In summary, Wetherspoon believes that the pub trade should get behind two tax campaigns. 

One is that pubs and supermarkets should be treated equally for the purposes of VAT- and the other is that the business rates multiplier should be reduced to 28 pence. 

There we have it. Nirvana for the pub industry in one sentence.

Above all, we say, avoid excessive complication. In other words, keep it simple, stupid…...

ENDS

Enquiries:

Nigel Connor Legal Director 07818 232529

Eddie Gershon Company Spokesman 07956 392234

Please send any questions by email to [email protected]

Notes to editors

1. J D Wetherspoon owns and operates pubs throughout the UK. The Company aims to provide customers with good-quality food and drink, served by well-trained and friendly staff, at reasonable prices. The pubs are individually designed, and the Company aims to maintain them in excellent condition.

2. Visit our website:  www.jdwetherspoon.co.uk