To ask why you support the farmers, regarding inheritance tax?

Farmers are some of the hardest working amongst us! They are already having to diversify now to survive,Farm shops ,cafes.play barns ,camping and so on. Up at stupid o clock.few (if any ) holidays or even days off.Few people would swap I think .Food prices will increase and we will be the poorer for it.So yes I support JC and all the farmers!

Yup

I struggle to comment on this without wanting to rant and sound chaotic and angry about people that don't understand farming, especially after reading some of the stuff posted by i assume people somewhat jealous that generational "wealth" is a thing.

I'm not a farmer, nore am i married to a farmer. None of my family are farmers. But i grew up with my horses kept on a beef farm, went to Agricultural college, worked at an agri uni and plenty of my friends ARE farmers or farmers wives.

I've not spoken to all of them this week, but 4 of them that i have, have been to their accountants and solicitors. They all have relatively small farms but all values well in excess of £3m. None of them can pay additional tax bills, even over 10 years. It would mean 10 years of little to no investment in the farm itself, no buffer for rising costs and even less take home pay. They should absolutely not be expected to reduce farm size by selling up to pay a death tax.

Their were thousands of people at the farmers rally, they asked to hands up who had spoken to advisors, then hands down if unaffected, barely any hands went down. It's going to affect far, far more people than figures quote.

It's laughable to suggest paying it off over 10 years is viable, too. They do not have the spare cash.

4 farmers have already taken their lives since the news.

what's the answer? Well firstly i t don't think anybody should pay tax on death. But realistically they need to have factors such as working farms are exempt - its clear what farms are true working farms from tax returns - this way the people who buy land as a get out of paying tax loop hole will need to pay, but the generational farms can continue doing what they do. If a generational farm ever gets to the point where the next gen don't want to continue & want to sell up then IHT comes in to play at that point.

Being forced to sell up to pay IHT won't mean farm workers or tenant farmers will suddenly be able to afford to buy them up. it won't be those that love farming that will be buying. Or joe bloggs from the local town who's always fancied having a dabble farming buying it - he wouldn't last 5 minutes even if he could afford to purchase in the first place.

I'm not wealthy, i'm not from a wealthy family, but i have zero jealousy/envy of those that have more than me, either from them working for it or inheriting. I never understand people who think "well if i can't have it/wont ever be able to have it/not entitled to it, nobody should be" - and there a LOT of those people on MN.

I would hate to be a farmer, they absolutely make more sacrifices than your average joe UK family will ever have to make.

I'll forever passionately support agriculture.

So this really does hit the elderly farmer and that food security and not much else. Labour have got this very wrong

Yes that’s something they can do, but short term this is a very precarious situation.
Over a third of farmers are over retirement age, typically farms and responsibilities aren’t fully handed to the next generation until an elderly farmer literally cannot do it. Many will not live for 7 years.

I think it’s VERY short sighted it’ll just kill off farming and decimate the food supply chain

A Trust. Pass it on now and live for seven years. I’m pretty sure a tax lawyer could come up with more.

So far I’ve only really seen “up to £3m you’re fine, what are you worrying about”

Can you outline other ways please?

Like I said there are ways to get round this tax so lots of unnecessary frothing.

Again with the “very well off”.
Most farmers are not very well off.

Labour puts no value on farming so why on earth should farmers support them? Labour currently seem to be making decisions that will risk food security, which seems a wilfully ignorant and short sighted thing to do.

Do people realise that people who are buying land as an IHT dodge are still farming it? Or rather they are renting it out to be farmed by others? Sometimes on very long leases of 20 years. So we can’t just make a rule that “if the land is used for farming don’t tax it but tax people like James Dyson” . It doesn’t work like that.

There’s a lot of frothing on here but actually there are ways to get around paying this tax, and really it has been put in place to protect the smaller farming communities. Most farmers round here are incandescent with rage but honestly they are very well off and so presume that’s why. They also hate labour with a vengeance so anything they do will cause a massive uproar.

The morning radio rounds have been dire from Labour

lol people can see edits so if you have something to say at least stick with it

That got cut in this budget too!

I think there should be differences in these rules between a farm that produces food in some way - either animals or crops - I think they should have support

I think this is especially important if it has been a working farm owned by the same family for generations

And the ones that are just land owned by XYZ as a way of collecting land assets then I don't think they should be supported in the same way

I don't have any experience of farming in this country but I have good friends who have a dairy farm, that also grows apples in the orchards, in Ontario, Canada. This is a family farm and all the generations live in the farm in different houses. Obviously Canada has much more land than the UK but my friends aren't rich by any description but live in a lovely location

Firstly, old grandad living on the farm is likely now living in a cottage not the farmhouse. That was given to his son when he had children. Grandson who now has a girlfriend or wife is in another cottage. When he has kids he will move into the farmhouse and Dad will move to the cottage.

Now remember while all this is going on, they are paying no personal mortgage, no rent and in most cases the farm pays the majority of electric, gas, heating fuel, council tax, water rates etc. Now imagine if you had all those day to day costs removed from your monthly bills. Could you possibly have saved a few bob for the day you fully retire and need to get a home of your own?

I.support them for the purposes of food security and I don't want the countryside built on.

Gosh, there are some very defensive and even aggressive comments on here backing the Government's position. They're very similar in tone and content to some of the Labour ministers quizzed about this on their morning media rounds, who can barely contain their disdain for rural communities.
Welcome, Labour HQ employees! You're brave....

Someone said a company would help- no, you still pay IHT on shares, same problem

You can get business property relief actually.

The fact that so many chose to protest today wearing tweed flapcaps & blazers, or expensive Barbour waxed jackets, was extremely telling as to who is most worried about that and how limited their exposure is to the extent of suffering in other parts of our society.

We all have to pay a bit more. These are not the poorest/most vulnerable among us.

I'm connected with the private client/wealth management space.

Investment in agricultural land and property has been an inheritance tax planning favourite for ages now. We have a lot of clients who have made money in finance, law, consulting etc and buy small holdings. They are hobby farmers at best - there's a whole industry around advising on how to maximise benefits, from what constitutes a reasonable "farmhouse" to availing yourself of various subsidies and the like relating to green incentives etc.

These are the people the change is targeting. Only a small percentage of uk farms will actually be caught and they are typical the largest/richest.

When you consider that the average farmer's income is almost 20% lower than the national average - and yet their average working week is 65 hours - about 1 and 3/4 times the national average, I think they need every bit of their land/assets to remain on the farm in order to protect our food supplies.*

We all know every bit of land sold off to p[ay IHT will be snapped up by developers or investors looking for carbon offset or solar farms.

Another question: why hasn't the government made it mandatory to plonk solar farms on car parks/buildings/newbuilds in preference to siting them on quality fertile south facing land?

*(figures might not be 100% doing this from memory)

And everyone should be pissed off that the nil rate band hasn’t changed since 2009. The £325k allowance should be £500k now.

I don't support them. Anything that costs / pisses off that scrofulous knuckle dragging oxygen thieving tax evading twat Clackson is good with me 👌
And Dyson can Do One too 🖕