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What will your business rates bill be from April 2026?
Two thresholds decide more than any negotiation: £51,000 and £500,000. A revaluation can push a property across one without anything about the premises changing, and the first most occupiers hear of it is the bill.
- Business rates
- Retail and hospitality
- Small firms
- Property
The short answer
From 1 April 2026 England has five multipliers: below £51,000 rateable value, 38.2p for retail, hospitality and leisure and 43.2p for others; from £51,000 to £499,999, 43p and 48p; at £500,000 and above, 50.8p for all uses. Enter a rateable value and a use and this returns the multiplier that applies, the annual bill, and how close you are to the threshold above you.
On this page · 5 sections
The bill is the rateable value multiplied by a multiplier, less any relief. The multiplier is fixed by band and use; the rateable value is the part you can challenge; the reliefs are the part most occupiers underclaim.
Set the use field to 1 for retail, hospitality or leisure and 0 for everything else. It only changes the answer below £500,000 — above that the distinction disappears entirely.
Your numbers
Opens on a worked example, not an industry average. Replace every figure with your own — there is no such thing as a default here.
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Show the working
What this leaves out, and it is a lot
This is the multiplier arithmetic only, for England. It does not calculate small business rate relief, transitional arrangements, charitable or rural relief, empty property relief, or any local discretionary scheme — all of which can change a bill substantially, and several of which are not applied automatically.
It does not apply to Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland, which run separate systems with their own poundages.
And it is not advice on a specific property. If the number here is materially different from your bill, the explanation is almost always a relief you are getting, a transitional adjustment, or a rateable value that is not the one you thought.
If your answer is that the valuation looks wrong, do not hire us. Hire a rating surveyor, who can challenge it and whose fee is set against the reduction. We build systems; there is nothing here for software to do, and we would rather say so than find something.
The useful habit
Write the two thresholds down somewhere the business will see them — £51,000 and £500,000 — with your current rateable value beside them and the date you last checked. That is a thirty-second exercise that catches a revaluation moving you across a line, which is the way this change usually arrives.
Questions people actually ask
What are the 2026/27 business rates multipliers?
Five in England. Below £51,000 rateable value: 38.2p for retail, hospitality and leisure and 43.2p for other properties. From £51,000 to £499,999: 43p for RHL and 48p for others. At £500,000 and above: 50.8p for all uses, with no RHL distinction.
How is a business rates bill calculated?
Rateable value multiplied by the multiplier that applies to the property, less any reliefs. The rateable value is set by the Valuation Office Agency and is the part that can be challenged; the multiplier is fixed by band and use and is not negotiable.
Does retail hospitality and leisure relief still exist?
From 1 April 2026 it is replaced by two permanently lower multipliers for eligible properties below £500,000 rateable value. The practical difference is that a multiplier is the rate rather than a discount renewed each year, which removes an annual uncertainty from planning.
Why does the threshold matter so much?
Because the multiplier applies to the whole rateable value, not just the part above the threshold. Crossing £51,000 or £500,000 raises the rate on everything, so a small increase in value near a threshold produces a large increase in bill — and a revaluation can cross it without anything about the premises changing.
Sources
- Camden Council, “Business rates explained 2026 to 2027”, read 23 September 2026: five multipliers from 1 April 2026 — small business RHL below £51,000 at 38.2p, small business other at 43.2p, standard RHL £51,000 to £499,999 at 43p, standard other at 48p, and high value £500,000 and above at 50.8p for all uses. Revaluation effective 1 April 2026 using market values as at 1 April 2024. camden.gov.uk ↗ — secondary; a billing authority publishing the national multipliers it must apply re-checked every 6 months
- England only. This calculates the multiplier arithmetic and does not model small business rate relief, transitional arrangements, charitable, rural or empty property relief, or local discretionary schemes. It is not advice on a specific property and we are not rating surveyors. — a stated limit on the tool above
Checked 23 September 2026. Next scheduled check 22 March 2027. Numbers that move — leaderboards, live indices — are re-checked every 30 days; annual datasets and rules in force every six months; dated research once a year. If something here has gone stale before we got to it, tell us and we will correct it and say what changed.
A threshold you cross without noticing is the expensive kind.
Rateable value, headcount, turnover, capacity — every business sits near several lines that change its obligations, and almost none of them are written down in one place. We build that list, with the number, the source and the date each was last checked.
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