Where do wedding venues stand on business rates?

The definitions concern the range of wedding venues’ operations and what their spaces are used for and how they are used. The perception of how operations fit within the locally rated business tax landscape is varied, with many regional differences.

There are an average of 14 suppliers at a UK wedding, giving wedding venues a great overview of the various trading operations and challenges of those suppliers. Wedding planners, hairdressers, makeup artists, videographers, food trucks, drivers, photographers, stationers, entertainers, celebrants and musicians need no premises. Even if parts of their homes are rated as partially non-domestic for spaces such as offices, their rateable obligations to the local authority are negligible in comparison to that of the host buildings that they operate in.

Wedding suppliers such as dress providers, jewellers, florists, caterers and cake makers have traditionally needed buildings and pay business rates that are subject to the Relief scheme. They face competition from online suppliers even in these sectors – even providers such as specialist shoemakers can operate entirely online – creating very unequal comparables on the bottom line in the wedding industry.

The taxation issue for venues that host weddings is whether what they provide is serviced or unserviced. Wedding venues typically undertake many services for the production of a wedding event. Weddings are packaged and branded as the venue’s offering and perceived as such by owners, clients and guests. There are multiple employed venue staff, a host of equipment, regulatory responsibilities and ultimate control of event activities. It all seems the same as running a club or hotel, but under the valuation of property classes, the function of hosting a wedding is rated very differently. The government persists in the idea that money gained from a wedding venue is as a hired-out property, and that is “an investment activity”. They also insist that events are made up of the wedding couples’ suppliers. Wedding venues are fully engaged in a hospitality activity but can be fiscally labelled as being almost passive in their events.

The reality is, that each local authority takes its own view, and the levels of provision that include running a staffed bar, co-ordination of all suppliers and guests and running the premises can still be viewed as “few services”. “Few services” incur business rates of between 20-26%, and in Wales this can be as high as 40%, although recent changes in Wales have addressed the issue under different criteria.