Br0kenTeleph0n3

Following the broadband money

How BT scores in the fibre rates wars

with 11 comments

Picture by BigRiz. Some rights retained.

Picture by BigRiz. Some rights retained.

BT’s competitors may be paying nearly 20 times more in taxes to light fibre networks than the incumbent operator, but the politicians who make competition policy and the civil servants responsible for setting tax rates and regulating competition are turning a blind eye.

The calculations are based on official published figures. They were prepared by an Other Operator, to use the jargon, who prefers to remain anonymous. They are based on figures that BT is required to submit to Ofcom. The picture they present is supported by a detailed assessment of BT and Ofcom’s use of the business rate tax prepared by a specialist market research firm.

In the past, Ofcom and the Valuation Office Agency (VOA), which sets business tax rates, have said BT’s network is too complicated to work out what business tax the incumbent should pay. The calculations below shows that this isn’t necessarily the case. This view is backed by an exhaustive critique of the so-called cumulo rates (business rate taxes) by market research firm Analysys Mason in 2011.

Asked to comment on the accuracy of the calculations, Ofcom referred queries to the VOA, now part of HMRC.

A VOA spokesman said the VOA’s method for setting the taxes had been tested in the courts. It did not respond to queries about the accuracy of the calculations.

According to the Other Operator’s calculations, BT pays the so-called fibre tax at a rate of £1.04 per fibre-kilometre on a Long Run Incremental Cost (LRIC) basis. Other operators (except Virgin Media) pay a rate of £51.98 per fibre-kilometre.

Analysys Mason used a different basis for calculating the tax rate. It found that the rateable value (RV) of a line rented under WLR (Wire Line Rental) is £5.34. This gave rise to a per line tax bill of £2.21 for 2010/11, and £2.45 in 2013/14. Ofcom estimated the tax due at £3.03, the researcher found.

One of Ofcom’s Statutory Duties under the Communications Act 2003 is 3(1)b: “It shall be the principal duty of Ofcom, in carrying out their functions…to further the interests of consumers in relevant markets, where appropriate by promoting competition.” Ofcom declined to comment on the effect the difference in tax rates might have on the competitiveness of the fibre market.

Politicians who were asked for comment did not respond. To be fair, parliament was in recess as this story was being developed.

Background

The government collects “business rates” taxes on all non-domestic properties. It is a highly regressive tax paid before the business earns an income, let alone a profit. No other country in the EU has this tax, except Ireland.

The VOA calculates rates on the nominal rental or rateable value (RV) of the property, which is revalued every five years. VOA considers all passive communications infrastructure as rateable, including buildings. It believes BT’s “hereditament” or rateable items are too complex to value individually, so it uses a methodology called receipts and expenditure, which is basically a tax on profits, and so payable in arrears. VM pays the tax on “homes passed”. Everyone else pays per lit fibre-kilometre.

This system favours operators with large networks. BT’s rateable value mysteriously decreases even though the incumbent has installed thousands of kilometres of fibre in the past decade.

The VOA also appears to have protected BT by over-taxing competitors for so-called next generation access networks. In its 2011 critique of cumulo (tax) rates, Analysys Mason said “The VOA seems to take the view that NGA lines are more profitable than those based on copper access lines. The VOA probably knew that BT estimated a cumulo cost per line in 2009/10 of approximately £5.50 for services based on copper access lines. At the same time, the VOA proposed to assess NGA operators (other than BT) for cumulo using an RV of £20 per home connected, equivalent to an annual charge of £9.70 (after multiplying by the rates multiplier of 48.5% in 2009/10).

“This implies that the profit potential of a non-BT NGA line is higher than that of a BT copper-based line, by a factor of 1.76 (£9.70 divided by £5.50, that is 76% higher), in the opinion of the VOA.”

The incoming coalition government promised then scrapped a review of the fibre tax in 2010. This left BT and VM with an enormous tax advantage over would-be competitors.

The damage the tax does to the competitive environment was raised recently in a paper commissioned and then apparently ignored by Ofcom.

The calculation

As to the calculation itself, please follow carefully:

BT’s regulatory accounts for 2013 are at http://www.btplc.com/Thegroup/RegulatoryandPublicaffairs/Financialstatements/2013/CurrentCostFinancialStatements2013.pdf

BT’s treatment of the “cumulo rates” or tax on its “hereditament” or taxable properties is outlined in a presentation, reference 1 below, from the Ofcom web site. This attributes some 79% of BT’s tax charge to its network division, Openreach. Some 24% is allocated to cable (fibre and copper), 54% to duct, and 1% to exchanges. This allocation is therefore distance-weighted.

BT uses a made-up figure called “profit weighted net replacement cost” or PWNRC to attribute its tax charges to the assets used in its services. Analysys Mason said of PWNRC “BT’s method…appears flawed. …the fact that ‘Openreach owns’ certain assets is not relevant to the allocation. The VOA methodology … suggests that RV (and hence cumulo cost) is a function of forecast profit, not asset ownership. If profits cause cumulo via the RV (as seems to be the case) then a causal allocation key would be profits, not “profit weighted NRC”.”

BT Openreach’s regulatory accounts show at page 68 revenues for the AISBO (Alternative Interface Symmetric Broadband Origination) fibre Ethernet-based group of regulated services, which Other Operators use and against which Other Operators compete. This comes to some £802m, of which £185m is attributable to link fibre (i.e. between exchanges). The table for link fibre shows revenues, fully-loaded costs (FAC), long run incremental costs (LRIC), and fibre-kilometres used.

On Page 134 of the Regulatory Accounts, BT provides a reconciliation between BT Openreach statutory accounts, and Regulatory accounts. This gives total costs (including 79% of the BT cumulo charges) for BT Openreach in 2013 as £3,763m.

BT’s total rateable value for England is shown in the Central Rating List as £172.15m and for Wales it is £7.85m, both effective from 1 January 2013, for a total of £180.00m.

In earlier litigation in the Lands Tribunal, it was accepted that approximately 80% of BT’s total rateable value is represented by its RV in England, giving at that time a total RV of £215.19m. At the 2012 multiplier of 45.2% this represents a tax charge of £97.27m.

The portion of business rates attributable to Openreach is thus 79% of £97.27m, or £76.84m. If this was spread evenly over all Openreach costs, this would result in business rate tax of £76.84/3,793 or 2.03% of costs.

The AISBO table at Page 71 gives a breakdown of the BT Openreach link lengths in fibre-kilometres. Link lengths are the closest comparable Ofcom fibre products to those sold by Other Operators. It is not clear whether or not the table refers to pairs or single fibres, so for the sake of these calculations, the Other Operator assumed the link lengths are based on a single fibre and not a pair.

It is therefore possible from the calculations of allocation above to estimate the tax rates per fibre-kilometre on both a FAC and LRIC basis.

From Page 71 (see table below), the FAC per km is £138.76. A calculated tax rate of 2.03% of costs therefore results in a tax rate of £2.82 per fibre-kilometre on a FAC basis. Using the BT-calculated figure of £51.37 per km results in a tax rate of £1.04 per fibre-kilometre on a LRIC basis.

The Other Operator said, “The difference is, we believe, due to the fact that additional fibre links would not, on average, use the same quantity of duct resources. This is indicated in the split of allocation between duct and fibre in Ref 1 below.”

The current rateable value applied to Other Operators is £230 per fibre pair-kilometre. On a multiplier of 45.2% for 2012/3, this gives rise to a tax charge of £103.96 per pair, or £51.98 per fibre.

Other Operators therefore pay some 18.43 times the rate paid by Openreach for link fibre on a FAC, and some 49.98 times that on a LRIC basis. If BT’s measure of link fibre was per fibre pair, then the difference would be 37 times and 100 times respectively.

BT Mainlink charges

If anyone would like to dispute the figures, please show your workings below.

References

1. BT’s view of its treatment of cumulo rates is dealt with at http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/binaries/consultations/wlr-cc-2011/clarifications/BT_Cumulo_Rates.pdf

This attributes some 79% of BT’s cumulo charge to Openreach, with a split of 24% attributable to cable (fibre and copper), 54% to duct, and 1% to exchanges. This attribution is therefore predominantly distance dependent.

2. BT’s CCA Regulatory Accounts 2013 http://www.btplc.com/Thegroup/RegulatoryandPublicaffairs/Financialstatements/2013/CurrentCostFinancialStatements2013.pdf

3. Central Rating List, England and Wales http://www.voa.gov.uk/rli/static/HelpPages/Documents/central_rating_list_for_england_2010.pdf

http://www.voa.gov.uk/rli/static/HelpPages/Documents/central_rating_list_for_wales_2010.pdf

3. BT Presentation on Regulatory environment and objectives http://www.btplc.com/Sharesandperformance/Presentations/downloads/Regulatoryteach-inJun12.pdf

4. Ofcom’s 2008 BCMR is at http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/binaries/consultations/bcmr08/summary/bcmr08.pdf

Part 4 can be found at http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/binaries/consultations/bcmr/summary/bcmr_pt4.pdf

Ofcom believes BT’s link costs to be 26p per metre. “Our calculations of the cost per metre of backhaul indicate that (Openreach’s) price is roughly double the underlying fully allocated cost (circa 50p per metre versus circa 26p).”

It went on to add, “There do appear to be significant issues with how BT currently prices its wholesale Ethernet services. The most significant issue appears to be that the elements of service that comprise a complete circuit do not appear individually closely related to FAC cost.”

Written by Ian Grant

2013/09/13 at 07:00

Posted in Uncategorized

11 Responses

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  1. Given the atrocious state of UK broadband services as a whole, perhaps it would be of far more economic benefit to the whole UK to remove fibre rating for all and dispose of the veritable army of regulators and administrators.

    Merrow Drover

    2013/09/13 at 07:09

    • Good point, I wonder what the net tax take is on the taxation of industrial assets like fibre, electricity distribution, etc.

      PhilT

      2013/09/13 at 08:39

      • I seem to recall that the net fibre tax benefit to the Exchequer is around £400M pa, which possibly explains why HMRC isn’t interested in removing it. If, however, the tax burden was levied on a more equitable basis across all operators that would almost certainly result in a price hike at retail level. Again, not much political gain in that. What’s needed is a proper economic assessment of the long term impact on GDP vs the short term pain of removing the tax altogether.

        David

        2013/09/13 at 09:31

  2. It should also be noted that the VOA where looking to tax wireless providers (the same as cell phone providers) as a view to making even more money and capping any such deployments by smaller outfits…

    Q

    2013/09/16 at 16:09

  3. Time for a spot of Euro-harmonisation by doing away with the Fibre Tax entirely or at least for new build fibre.

    A couple of years ago I blogged about this latter day window tax, its unintended consequences and proposed a solution, essentially generating more from VAT on the application of the outcome than is lost by eliminating business rates on telecoms infrastructure entirely http://web.archive.org/web/20090802152649/http://www.fibrestream.co.uk/2009/07/29/latter-day-window-tax/

    Guy Jarvis

    2013/09/17 at 03:23

    • You seem to be proposing rolling out FTTP to every property – how would this be funded and where does VAT fit in?

      Somerset

      2013/09/18 at 06:48

  4. Even if you where to offer that carrot for new fibre I don’t think it would do much with the BT setup (as such) they will just find a way to keep costs higher than then might otherwise be.

    Smaller outfits would only see some good if we got the poles n holes aggrements sorted with the likes of BT, Virgin & Colt/Verizon (EC1) there are other options like sewers, old tunnels and what was Raycall but don’t see the costs of the prep, weyleave & civils being any insentive to anyone.

    I don’t see a problem with a community digging there own trench, installing & lighting there own fibre – let’s face it the cost of that alone will in effect prohibit them from lighting 10x10gbit anyway so its not like people need to worry!

    Interesting topic & at some point if have time I might look at those figures.

    Q

    2013/09/17 at 10:22

  5. This article is a laugh a minute.

    All I can tell you is that there are many other operators who do not pay what you think they pay or what you have noted above.

    Neil.

    neilmcraeei

    2013/09/17 at 18:32

  6. […] call could open the way for a reassessment of the so-called fibre tax that makes BT’s competitors pay 20 times more to operate fibre networks. It could also kill efforts by civil servants to tax Wi-Fi hot-spots, […]


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