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

I just think it's insane that a Government doesn't have a coherent strategy for securing its country's food production for years to come. There's lots of other ways they could get tax revenue, are huge companies like Amazon, Vodaphone etc paying their taxes yet? Or tax the bloody royal family ffs...

It depends on how productive the land is. Scrubby land may only support moorland sheep so can be worth less, fertile arable land worth more.

My area is a bit of a mixture, but in general it’s estimated at around £10,000 an acre.
I’ve seen scrubby fields sell for around £4000 an acre, then I’ve seen arable sell at almost £20,000. It depends where it is and how much it’s wanted.

A local farm was recently sold to a millionaire from London who wanted a bolt hole, the land is now neatly mowed with nothing on it, and he spends his time Oop North complaining at the farmers for farming. Meanwhile that’s 120 acres out of food production.

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Well, to start, what visa would people use? The Tier 1 visa programme closed last year. Its replacement, the Global Talent Visa, requires substantial evidence of accomplishment in select fields. It is not easy to obtain.

Then, on what grounds do you think people would even want to do this? Neither Norway nor Switzerland has IHT, both are delightful places to live with higher standards of living than we have, you can easily survive on English in each, and yet I am not aware that people are clamouring to move to either to avoid IHT.

Indeed. There are no poor farmers round my way and on the news tonight they were all nicely turned out in Schoffel jackets. Is it any surprise they're up in arms about paying more tax?!

😀😀

I imagine that with planning this will be what happens, but as farms tend to be multi generational there won’t be time now for many to do this.

There’s also often inheritance difficulties in that a farmer may have two or more children who grow up and outgrow the capabilities of a farm to provide for more families, so I know of several local cases where an elderly farmer has stuck his head in the sand to leave his adult children to fight it out, which again leads to farms being split up and sold. In an ideal world they should be sorting these issues out long before they are an issue, but for the immediate future the IHT decision has the power to decimate farming.

@whenemmafallsinlove It is the hypocrisy I find galling. In this area they are looking to earmark large tracts of land for housing development - 4,600 houses. The farmers who own the possible development sites are not opposing the developments but very keen to get their land chosen. My father and I carved careers outside agriculture and probably did better financially as a result but although our farming relations might be cash poor they have lifestyle benefits that most people can only imagine and loads of opportunity to diversify and enjoy the benefits. No one likes paying tax but paying at 20% is still lvery favourable treatment.

I support the farmers in this because honestly the alternative position makes no sense.
Wanting to levy IHT on agricultural land, whilst knowing how farming in the UK currently operates, how the only people really doing it were born into it, how much farmers earn in reality, how as a 'fresh business' of buying land at £10k an acre to start farming is a completely unfeasible businesses etc etc, its a completely untenable position.

It's basically saying that you want to destroy farming, or at best have farming become the exclusive domain of megacorps with a huge drop in national food production because half of current farming is only facilitated by the charity of those doing it, willing to work 18hr days for what ultimately adds up to approx £4 an hour, if that.

How do they even value the land?

I support farmers because they keep me alive with the food they produce.

I get that you'll be upset if you have to pay 20% above 1.5m , but I've may have read incorrectly that most farms are not above this value?

Round here a £1.5m farm is barely viable.
When you consider the house, the land, machinery etc it doesn’t take much to add up to £1.5m of assets, but in reality that would be a very small farm which, unless you cleverly diversified, wouldn’t provide much of a living.

This is why it’s a problem. People assume farmers are rolling in it because they have farms worth a few million quid, but they’re barely scraping a living wage from it.

Does the 7-year gift rule not apply to farms? If you're so keen on your kids getting the land why not transfer the title once you hit sixty and give them a probable tax-free inheritance?

I'm really trying to understand why so many farmers are upset. Most farmers won't pay any IHT unless their farm is over 1.5m and 3m if the parent they are inheriting from has never been married. Then, if they are gifted the property 7 years before the death of their parent/s, then there is no IHT to pay.

I get that you'll be upset if you have to pay 20% above 1.5m , but I've may have read incorrectly that most farms are not above this value?

I’ve listened to the arguments and learned more about the farming industry over the last couple of days but I still can support the farmers on this.

Inheritance tax is wrong IMO, the thresholds and the the way it is implemented is fundamentally unfair. But if it’s ok for the rest of us that have an asset without the bank balance to go with it then it’s ok for farmers too.

I get that (some, not all) farming is essential, but so is housing and landlords don’t expect to get away without paying tax on their deaths so why should farmers?

So farmers might have to sell part of the business when the parents die but that’s no worse for them than it is for people who have had to sell their homes to pay inheritance tax.

Rules can be put in place to ensure that the country still has as much farmland as it needs so I’m not convinced about the argument that farmland will stop being farmland.

It is easy to look at all the acres a 'wealthy' farm has, and all of their machinery and livestock and assume that the farmers must be minted. Far from it. The cost of looking after the land, animals, machinery, crops etc often means they are struggling to break even and are extremely cash poor. This is where the government's new scheme of making farmers pay inheritance tax falls flat on it's face. All of the farmers I know would be howling with laughter at the idea they are able to buy a brand spanking new land rover every year as well.

Did you actually read it? It’s not tripe it’s a list of fair reasons why this policy is right and needs to happen.

I support them.
I live in a rural area that incorporates hill farms, moorland and a bit further out arable.
I know many farmers and despite what we’re being told on SM not one has a Range Rover, all
have a scrappy pick up truck that’s able to tow a cattle trailer + cows.
I know two farmers whose dc go to public school, but that’s because both of the wives have set up businesses that are doing well and have nothing to do with farming.
On paper a typical dairy farm round here might be worth 4-5 million, including machinery, land and livestock. In reality this makes a very low living for a three generation family, all pulling their weight. The middle generation (40 something) works very long hours to the point where he is on far less than minimum wage.
They provide milk to a UK based company. They provide local butchers with beef.

When the old farmer dies they could owe £1m in IHT, even if spread over 10 years this is far, far more money than they could ever access.

Farming is a unique business in that people are almost literally born into the job, having years of training that start when they can walk, that goes on until the main working farmer needs to slow down and the younger generation are then trained up and experienced enough to take over. That’s how it works. You can’t do three years at college and be a fully fledged farmer, it takes decades of working long hours in quite crappy conditions. It’s nothing like other businesses.

If I travel half an hour east I end up in arable country where a large chunk of land is being converted to solar panels (the managers of those companies often drive range rovers). More and more farming land is being eroded in this way.

There are a few threads running at the moment about the possibility of war. We’re certainly living in interesting times, and I for one think food safety should be a very high priority. We are an island. If there is a war that involves us we’d be sitting ducks without even being able to feed ourselves without relying on imports. Imports that have far lower health and safety standards than our own home grown food.

I do see why people don’t understand. If you live in a town and you’re hard up it must rankle to be told all about those millionaire farmers rocking up in their brand new range rovers, swanning back to their estates, but the truth for the majority of farmers is far from the landed gentry image that SM has created. We’d be fucked without them, and once it’s gone it’s too late.

Because they are asset rich and cash poor

But those living on the edge won’t be affected. Only those over £3million.

The wealthiest should be the ones who bear the greatest burden. What a load of socialist tripe. Disgraceful. Why are they wealthy in the first place pray tell?

I think this has all the information on it.

To be fair, we all know farming families try and deal with this at a young age by effectively matchmaking with another farming family ie the whole Point of the young farmers association.

Close the loophole for those buying farms to save IHT, keep the relief for genuine farmers. Very few will have the cash to pay and selling off land and/or livestock will undermine the viability of the business.

The world is increasingly unstable and we need to improve our food security, not undermine it by having it taken over by foreign owned corporates.

Sadly I suspect a lot of elderly farmers will shoot themselves before the tax change comes in to save the family farm. Farmers are a very pragmatic bunch. One has already done so sadly, shooting himself the day before the budget off the back of rumours this was going to be brought in immediately.

@Astrabees every farmer you claim to know has either stopped farming altogether or is doing so cruelly? That seems a little unlikely to me. There is a lot of diversification but that's because the farming economy had absolutely hit the buffers and farmers quite like to be able to eat, clothe their family and run a car.
Nice job on evidencing how jealous you are of farmers though. You'd get on well with Rachel Reeves I expect.