Leases may be either operating leases or finance leases . The distinction is important because operating leases are excluded from the credit controls imposed by central government. Leases which are not operating leases are finance leases. A finance lease is a lease that transfers substantially all the risks and rewards of ownership of an asset to the lessee. A finance lease usually involves payment by the lessee to the lessor of the full cost of the asset together with a return on the capital which the lessor has tied up in the asset.
Finance leases count against credit approvals for capital control purposes.
As a result, all finance leases have to be regarded as counting against capital controls until proven otherwise, even though any one lease may fall below the ,10,000 de minimis level. The main difference between a levy and a precept is that the latter appears as a separate item on the Council Tax bill. There are a number of different types of local authorities, which are often grouped into eighteen administrative classes that reflect the range of functions and statutory responsibilities that they discharge. First, there are the local authorities that receive a direct share of central funding from Revenue Support Grant and National Non-Domestic Rates. There are currently 432 authorities falling into this category, and this is the number most often quoted by the Government for the total number of local authorities.