Digitalising Business Rates (DBR)
The final report of the Business Rates Review stated that "modernisation and digitisation…would be an effective way to support firms to navigate the [business rates] system"25. The government introduced DBR reforms in England and Wales in this Act as a step towards this goal.
	DBR will connect the business rates information held locally by billing authorities with HMRC tax data. This will help to modernise the business rates system and improve the data available to central and local government. The government issued a public consultation on DBR in July 2022 and in its response, published in March 2023, set out its plans to legislate for DBR.
	The Act creates a new statutory duty on ratepayers to provide to HMRC an up-to-date taxpayer reference number. Ratepayers will provide this information using a new online service. In order to simplify the experience for ratepayers, this will be the same service through which ratepayers will provide information to the Valuation Office Agency to meet the other duties on ratepayers being introduced in this Act (set out at paras 6-12 above). HMRC will use the information provided via the service to match the ratepayer to their tax data. An accompanying light-touch penalties regime will be introduced alongside the duty to provide a number, in order to encourage compliance.
	The matching of ratepayers’ property data to their tax data will provide central and local government with a more holistic view of businesses. The availability of better data could facilitate the more targeted design of – and improved compliance with – business rates relief schemes. In order to achieve this, certain information will need to be shared between HMRC and billing authorities (such as information about which reliefs ratepayers are in receipt of). The Act therefore also provides for a two-way exchange of information between HMRC and billing authorities (subject to data protection safeguards).