BUSINESS RATES AND THE GOVERNMENT GATEWAY REGISTERING YOUR BUSINESS AND CLAIMING YOUR PROPERTIES

Transcription

1 BUSINESS RATES AND THE GOVERNMENT GATEWAY REGISTERING YOUR BUSINESS AND CLAIMING YOUR PROPERTIES With effect from 1 st April 2017 the process by which ratepayers can contest the rating assessment on properties which they own or occupy has changed for properties in England. A new procedure, known as Check, Challenge, Appeal (CCA), has been implemented which requires much greater involvement by the ratepayer, proving their interest in a property and therefore their right to contest an assessment as an interested party. This note sets out the steps that need to be taken in order for Gerald Eve to be able to act as your agent to secure the best levels of assessment and lowest business rates liability. The Government Gateway Ratepayers now have to claim properties and prove their claim, which all starts with a Government Gateway account. Many businesses (and individuals) will already have a Government Gateway account, used for a variety of government services, such as VAT, corporation tax or PAYE. In theory it is possible to add business rates as an additional service to an existing account. Presently, however, this option is not available and claiming properties requires creating a new Government Gateway account. Even if this matter is fixed, we would recommend that a separate account is set up for business rates in any case, as there will be little overlap between roles in most organisations and the management of account users will be simpler. This guide sets out, screen by screen, the four steps that need to be undertaken so that Gerald Eve are able to provide you with rating services to check the basis on which the VO has assessed your properties, challenge the level of valuation and make an appeal to the Valuation Tribunal if the check and challenge are not accepted by the VO: Step 1 - Setting up a new Government Gateway account (Page 2) Step 2 - Proving your identity (Page 6) Step 3 - Claiming properties (Page 11) Step 4 - Nominating Gerald Eve as your agent (Page 22) The screen shots contained herein are from the VOA business rates valuation website, which is Crown Copyright. Gerald Eve Page 1 Updated April 2017

2 Step 1 setting up a new Government Gateway account As the facility to add business rates as a service is not available via the main Government Gateway website, setting up a new account via this route also does not work (as at 05/04/2017). Instead, you can access the registration by navigating directly to: You should see this screen: Note that the process requires identity verification checks, which will include your National Insurance number plus details from one or other of your passport, P60 or recent payslips. You will be invited to register your business after clicking on the Register now button, to set up an organisation-level account. You will then be asked whether your business is already registered for this (the business rates valuation) service: Gerald Eve Page 2 Updated April 2017

3 Selecting No will invite you to choose whether to use an existing Government Gateway account. It may be possible to use this route to add business rates valuation as a service on to a gateway account. It is not currently possible to add the service via the main Government Gateway portal. Our recommendation is a that businesses have an organisation level account for business rates separate to that used for other government services. You should therefore select No on the screen below when first registering to use the service. Clicking on Continue will set out the next steps in the process. There is short on-screen guidance on how to register as an agent or to appoint an agent, which can be read by expanding the paragraphs underlined and in blue text. Gerald Eve Page 3 Updated April 2017

4 The next stage will ask for the individual details of the person setting up the organisation-level account, which will then be subject to identity verification. The person creating the organisation-level account will automatically become an administrator of the account. Other users can then be set up as administrators or as assistants. Either will be able to undertake the property claiming process and appointment of agent, but administrators can add and remove assistants and other administrators. Where a Government Gateway account is used for multiple services, administrators also determine which services are included and which assistants have access to which services. Gerald Eve Page 4 Updated April 2017

5 Having completed the details requested as shown in the screen shot above, a Government Gateway ID will be generated and shown on screen. It is important that you make a note of this ID as this is the only notification you will receive. It does not seem that the details are sent to you by or by post, nor does it seem possible to recover the ID via the account administration interface. If you should lose the ID it is possible to request a reminder at the login stage. This is likely to require resubmission of identity check data. Having generated a User ID you will then receive confirmation that a Government Gateway account has been set up for your business. However you will still need to provide identity verification to prove your entitlement to act on behalf of your business. Gerald Eve Page 5 Updated April 2017

6 Step 2 proving your identity The details you will be required to provide include your contact details at work, your National Insurance number and home address. Gerald Eve Page 6 Updated April 2017

7 Having submitted all that information, you will then encounter the identity verification screen. You will be asked to select one from three possible document types by which you intend to verify your identity: UK-issued passport P60 Payslip The next screens illustrate the questions that may be asked if you have selected P60, and were relevant to a registration being made prior to 06/04/2017 when the most recent completed tax year was 2015/16. At some point after the commencement of the new tax year the questions may be expected to change to ask for details from the 2016/17 P60 in place of the 2015/16 P60. Gerald Eve Page 7 Updated April 2017

8 The questions will vary according to the document(s) you have selected to use to verify your identity. Depending upon the ease with which the Government Gateway service can confirm your identity, you could be asked to provide additional information in order to complete the process. Having submitted sufficient information you should hopefully arrive at the following screen, confirming that your identity has been verified: It is then necessary to provide some information about the business for which you have set up the account. Clicking on the Register your business button will take you to the next round of questioning. Gerald Eve Page 8 Updated April 2017

9 You will be asked to provide your business name, company address and contact details. Note that the VOA requests that the address provided at this stage be one that is for a monitored account as this is the address they will use for correspondence. It is yet clear what communications may be sent by the VOA to this address, nor is there any facility at present to allow this address to be updated. Gerald Eve Page 9 Updated April 2017

10 Beyond this general business correspondence/contact information, no further data should be required to complete the process of setting up the organisation-level Government Gateway account, and you should receive final confirmation the registration for the service is complete. You have the facility here to either Manage properties or to add additional users to the account, either as administrators or assistants (either will be able to manage properties but only administrators can add or remove other users). If you add other users, for each user you add a new Government Gateway ID will be issued. You will need to make a note of this ID and provide it to the user, as there seems to be no notification process that goes directly to the new user to let them know their ID, nor does the account administration page show you the allocated ID once the user account has been created. The administrator setting up a new user account also determines the initial password for the new user, but the new user can subsequently change this. It is therefore prudent to make sure that whenever a user ID is generated that you make sure to print it and retain it until the new user has confirmed that they have successfully logged into the Government Gateway service and verified their identity (all additional users will be required to undertake similar personal verification checks using their National Insurance number plus details from their P60, payslips or passport). The process set out above assumes that each stage of the process can be completed without incident and that there are no special considerations that apply to a registration. It has been compiled from the actual process of registering Gerald Eve for the VOA service which was completed on 1 st April 2017 and took place quite smoothly. The initial page of the process, shown in the first screen shot suggests that the process will take about 15 minutes to complete, and based upon our experience of registering Gerald Eve, this seems reasonable if all the information that will be required is already to hand. Beyond the occasion help tips that appear on screen, there is no guide that has been issued by the VOA or the sponsoring government department to assist with this process, so we cannot say what issues you might encounter if your registration process is not as straightforward as we encountered, but we will assist wherever possible as best we can. Please get in touch with your Gerald Eve contact at this stage to discuss the need to claim properties or whether it can wait until a more appropriate multiple claim and certification process is operational. Gerald Eve Page 10 Updated April 2017

11 Step 3 claiming properties The process of setting up the Government Gateway account and registering for the business rates valuation service is a prerequisite to viewing detailed valuations, recording the appointment of an agent and contesting assessments. Having set up the account, any of the users associated with that account (individuals set up as either administrators or assistants) can undertake the property claim process. For every hereditament (separately assessed property) a business needs to claim and prove its entitlement to be considered as an interested party. This is an onerous task and can only be undertaken at present on a single hereditament by hereditament basis. (The VOA have indicated further functionality will be added to the online service between now and the end of 2018 which should include, inter alia, the ability for owners or occupiers to link to multiple properties at one time). Until such time as this bulk process is made available, businesses will need to search for and claim each property, following steps as set out below. When you sign in to the service you will be presented with the dashboard for the organisation. Our understanding is that all users set up under the organisation-level account will see the same dashboard. You should see at least three options, to Manage properties, Claim properties and Manage agents. Gerald Eve Page 11 Updated April 2017

12 When you select Manage properties (or click on the Manage properties button immediately after first registering for the service) you will initially see a screen showing you that no properties have been claimed: You can choose to Add property from this screen, which will lead you to the same page as selecting Claim properties from the Dashboard home screen. This provides a search screen allowing a search by Postcode, Street name and town or using Advanced criteria: While searching by postcode is often quickest, please bear in mind that the postcode recorded by the VOA may not match that you know for the property. Likewise, the street name element of the street and town search will be dependent upon matching the address as recorded by the VOA which regularly differs from that used by the ratepayer. However the address and postcode recorded by the VOA should match that appearing as the property address on the actual rate demands. Gerald Eve Page 12 Updated April 2017

13 The final option of the advanced search allows various search bases, including local authority reference. Many local authorities include this reference on their rate demands and this allows an unambiguous match. Unfortunately this reference is not present on demands from all local authorities, some of which only include the business rates account number, which is a different reference and does not form part of the VOA s dataset. It should be possible to find most of your properties via the VOA search facility, but if you cannot locate particular properties Gerald Eve may be able to help find the local authority reference via our own copy of the raw data issued by the VOA. Gerald Eve Page 13 Updated April 2017

14 Having entered your search criteria, click on the blue search icon, or the green Search button if using the Advanced search criteria. Results will be presented in the next screen, and will be paginated if more than 25 results meet the search criteria: Gerald Eve Page 14 Updated April 2017

15 If no results are found a message to that effect will appear instead, though its placement on the page is after the links to useful information, rather than immediately below the search criteria: Please also note that although the VOA website includes assessments for properties in England and Wales, only properties in England fall under the CCA procedure, but Welsh properties are not automatically filtered out of the claim process. If you try to claim a property in Wales you will be presented with the following screen: Gerald Eve Page 15 Updated April 2017

16 If you click on the address field of one of the search result properties you will see details of the local authority reference, summary valuation (if available publicly) and RV history. This may be helpful in determining whether the correct property has been identified. If you have selected the wrong property then you have the option towards the top left of the screen to return to the search results. If the correct property has been identified then you continue the process by clicking on Claim this property. If you were confident from the original search results that the correct property could be identified then you could also have clicked on the Claim this property hyperlink that appeared alongside the address in the list of search results, without first navigating to the screen above. Gerald Eve Page 16 Updated April 2017

17 When you claim the property, you then have to state the basis of that claim, filling in information about your ownership or occupation of the property. Having confirmed whether your interest started prior to 1 st April 2017 and whether it continues to the date of claim, click on Add property to be taken to the screen in which you are required to upload proof of your interest. For occupiers this will normally take the form of your most recent rates demand. For other parties with an interest but who are not the ratepayer and thus not the recipient of rates demands other documentary evidence will be required, which could be in the form of a lease or certificate of title. Gerald Eve Page 17 Updated April 2017

18 Following the track for a business that is an occupier of the property you will need to upload a copy of a recent rates bill. (For clients subscribing to Gerald Eve s Rates Payments Management Service scanned copies of rates bills can be provided by our RPMS team). Select to option to indicate that you have a business rates bill and then click on Continue. You will then need to search for the file, which must be in JPEG or PDF format, and may not be greater than 10MB in size. Gerald Eve Page 18 Updated April 2017

19 Clicking on Choose a file to upload will open a file finder explorer window pointing to the locations you can access on your local machine and network (the illustrated example is based on the Windows operating system but will vary according to the device from which you are accessing the VOA service): Having selected a file, it will then appear in the VOA website submission screen. You can add further files or remove those already selected, then once you are satisfied that the necessary documents are present click on the Confirm button. A similar upload procedure will apply to other types of documents, such as leases, which will be needed where the claim is being made by an interested party other than the ratepayer, or where the ratepayer is claiming but has not received a business rates bill. Gerald Eve Page 19 Updated April 2017

20 You will then be required to make a declaration about the veracity of the information. There is no option to cancel here, but you can navigate away from the page, to the dashboard or by signing out, if you are not certain that the information being provided is correct. Assuming that you have made the declaration and proceeded, you will receive a message on screen confirming that the VOA have received the claim submission and that it will then be subject to validation. Gerald Eve Page 20 Updated April 2017

21 You may continue to add further properties, repeating the relevant search and upload steps above, or by clicking on the Manage properties button you will be taken to a list of all the properties claimed. This will also show the status of the claim process, with properties shown as Pending until the uploaded documentation has been reviewed and validated by the VOA, after which the status will move on to Approved. For properties in your list, you have the opportunity to appoint an agent and to view the valuations. For properties with Approved status, when you view the valuation you may have access to extended information that is only revealed to parties with a verified interest in the property. While a property is showing as Pending, you will only see the publicly available summary valuation information that is available to any user of the VOA website. Gerald Eve Page 21 Updated April 2017

22 Step 4 nominating Gerald Eve as your agent In order for Gerald Eve to be able to commence contesting valuations, you will need to nominate us as agent for each property concerned. This is accomplished by selecting the Appoint agent hyperlink next to the relevant property record. You will then be invited to enter the Agent code, which for Gerald Eve will normally be and confirm whether the extent of the agency instruction is to Check valuations, Challenge valuations or both. Please select Yes to both options. There may be some circumstances where we will ask you to use a different agent code to the default 36757, where there is particularly sensitive information that may be presented via the VOA property valuation pages and for which we have set up a separate agency account with a smaller group of users able to access the data. Use of these extra-restricted access services will be limited and your Gerald Eve account manager will be able to advise on situations where using such a facility would be desirable. Once the mandate to appoint an agent has been recorded, Gerald Eve will receive a notification via the dashboard we see when logging into the VOA website. Acceptance of each of these appointments will need to be confirmed by Gerald Eve, at which point we as agents will have the same access to any additional information presented in the summary valuation, but more importantly be able to commence the Check stage of CCA, progressing potentially to Challenge, Appeal and determination. Gerald Eve Page 22 Updated April 2017

23 Currently (as at 05/04/2017) when you sign out you are taken to the registration page. Within the text of this page there is a hyperlink to sign in to the service. This will take you to the login page, which can also be bookmarked with the following URL: If you access the Government Gateway page via another route, other than via property searches in the VOA website, then you may find that after signing in there is no access to the business rates service, due to its not being fully connected to the core Government Gateway service. Gerald Eve Page 23 Updated April 2017

24 If you cannot access the business rates dashboard after signing in, then the best option appears to be to sign out, go to the VOA website at and sign in from there. You can then enter your credentials and when you Sign in you should arrive at the business rates dashboard for your organisation. Gerald Eve Page 24 Updated April 2017