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

I agree with you insofar as we need to be looking at more food production not less. Are our farmers producing this at good value for money with regard to the return on subsidies, I'd suspect not. I know you work in agriculture as did I in regard to sales into the farming community. I suspect you will have seen the wastage in machinery not cared or maintained. Very much in the knowledge that eg the quad bike is disposable, get a new one on the subsidy payment soon.

I had to pay inheritance tax on my father’s estate which was split between my Step Mum and Half Sister and myself. It was a house and some savings - the house obviously went to my Step Mum and Half Sister as did a share of the money, and I was left some money. It was a decade ago when the threshold was much lower, so it wasn’t a lot of money, it was mostly the house that pushed it over the threshold.

It was a gift to have received anything as a first marriage child, and I didn’t begrudge paying inheritance tax given my Dad has received treatment for his cancer for a few years before his death. I kinda saw it as paying back into the NHS who cared for him.

I feel that inheritance tax is essentially paying it forward to the next generation to receive the public services that you enjoyed in your life.

I think that everyone should play by the same rules on inheritance tax, and that it should be a level playing field based on wealth.

perhaps supporting the legacy of the NHS and public services should be seen as an act of kindness when we pass on?

And then what do we eat?

No thanks due to food security and being able to buy local produce

People are right, farming is not a normal business. Farming is heavily subsidized. UK farmers currently receive 3.5 Billion GBP per year in direct and indirect farm subsidies as well as being exempted from IHT. The subsidies mean that farmers are already receiving large sums of money from the British tax payer (rather than the COA pre-BREXIT) so they can continue to farm even though farming in the UK makes little economic sense.

If farming was a normal business, farming in the UK would have largely ceased decades ago and the land used for other purposes both for profit and to convert for other public uses such as national parks, reforestation and restoration.

If the taxpayer is going to continue to subsidize the lives and livelihoods of a very small number of citizens then it is not unreasonable for the tax payer to want a return of some of subsidies after the farmer dies, in the form of IHT.

Alternatively, if farming in the UK is unsustainable without subsidies from the British taxpayer then should we still be farming in the UK or should the land be used for more profitable purpose (like solar farms or wind farms) and/or returned to public use to improve the environment for everyone? Essentially, what is the best use for the 3.5 Billion GBP of taxpayer moneys....keeping farmers on the land or using the land for something else?

Wilfred Emmanuel jones (the black farmer) is brilliant on this, he was on times radio earlier- -you have an asset that gives your opportunity.
-We are never ever going to get much needed reform in farming without getting the urban population on side and this war against liberal elites harms the cause.
-Farming is the least diverse and inclusive sectors in the uk and this is an opportunity to change that

more from him- https://www.bigissue.com/news/environment/farming-diversity-the-black-farmer/

Yes that's £100,000 with 10 years to pay.
Many of these have no mortgage, can claim VAT back as business expense, could rent out land for camping, set up FBTs etc.

My son will leave university with a student debt of around 45000 just as a comparison (plus interest at 7%). He will need to pay rent and tax too.

@LlynTegid The system on offer is pretty generous. https://www.gov.uk/government/news/what-are-the-changes-to-agricultural-property-relief

You have to bear in mind that the farm property has actually given a massive non taxed financial boost to the Farmer throughout his lifetime. Imagine if your mortgage/rent, electric, gas, heating fuel, council tax, insurance were all taken care of before you get your wages. For an average family that will be a saving of well over £1k every month. So you could say over the course of a 50 year work lifetime on the farm, he has had £600k worth of pay untaxed. For it to be considered within the total amount of his estate is not unreasonable.

I support them because I believe IHT to be pure theft. Nobody should be paying it - farmers, high value homeowners, low value homeowners - nobody. Once you have bought and paid for something, and paid all due taxes and God knows what other charges, it is your property to do with what you will, including leaving it in your will to someone else. It's nobody else's business and that includes the government. Scrap the whole thing.

I would have a defined exemption scheme, for those who can demonstrate a multi-generational period of a family farm, who apply in a time period, and where there is a sell-on clause say within 20 years of someone inheriting. A close definition of family too, and given a short window to apply, this would be sorted out in almost all cases long before death.

Not for anyone else.

In general I would like to see inheritance tax reform, treating property separately from other assets.

Yep. And pp still going on like this

'This is a fuss about nothing, stirred up by people who are still annoyed that Labour won, landbankers, and tax avoiders.'

What a load of BS as you say. Anything to not hold Labour to account for bad policies

I've been in the business.

I know this will disproprotionately affect small farmers the government shills are saying will come under the radar. Yes there are parts of the country where smaller farms won't be affected but there are plenty of areas that will and these people are not high income earners.

By all means tax the non-farming/barely farming private investors but the politics of envy have seen a weaker victim to put the boot into while the wealthy donor friends of all our governments slope off to make more money with some other avoidence scheme.

Sledgehammer nut cracking and a lot of fluff claims that it's only going to affect Clarkson and his kind. It's a big steaming pile of BS and I;ve stepped in enough of it to know it when I smell it.

*well, not "handful" obvs, but a small percentage of the rest

On the contrary, the argument about the average is statistically wrong, as per analysis, the distribution is usually and I think in this case too, pareto, therefore handful of people hold the vast amount, whilst vast majority are below threshold. Hence average seems high due to the large sums being added but most won't have to pay.

How does that help this farmer from the government's website:

Example 2: farm owned by one person

One person who owns a farm will be able to pass on land and property valued up to £1.5 million tax free to a child or grandchild. That is made up of their standard £500,000 tax-free allowance (£325,000 nil-rate band + £175,000 residence nil-rate band), and an additional £1 million tax-free allowance for agricultural property inheritance.

The key word there is average.

No one took into account that some small land holdings are worth millions as the land prices currently stand.

I couldn't care less that Labour is in power, no party has my vote currently. I do care that they have managed to spin a huge amount of press in all forms of media to target farmers when the real culprits are the tax avoiding loophole wanglers are private investors.

Like I said elsewhere, farmers tend not to be party donors, they aren't wealthy enough, but private investors are.

There is nothing like a big loud noisy distraction when there are lots of unpopular policies to get pushed through. These are good days to bury bad news.

The average family farm is worth around £2.7m, nowhere near £3m. Tax is only ever paid on the amount over the threshold, so even if you are £3.5m, you pay on the £500k, not the whole lot.

This is a fuss about nothing, stirred up by people who are still annoyed that Labour won, landbankers, and tax avoiders.

A business worth in excess of £3m is not small fry. As for paying additional tax bills, if you knew anything really about agriculture, then you would know that farmers are exceptional at not paying tax. Instead turning every penny of profit into a new piece of equipment to avoid it.

Ok... so children encouraged to farm and marry farmers. siblings that don't want to farm dont inherit, the one who wants to farm inherits the farm and doesn't pay tax. Got that right?
Sounds, archaic to me tbh. I can imagine lots of family tension, pressure and dead dreams as well as bitterness.in the meantime rest of us when we want to pass a business down pay tax. I worry about the unintended consequences wrt food prices etc but at the same time this state of affairs seem unfair and wholly milked by tax dodgers. Vast majority have also shot themselves in the foot with brexit and overseas labour (don't argue, there are scientific studies about the stats) . So overall, inclining to supporting the tax.

How do other countries do by the way? French farmers are famous protestor. Do they pay iht?

The study in your link doesn't show farmers 'voted overwhelmingly' for Brexit - are you sure you've read it?

Your link says;

Of the study population half stated they voted to leave, 45% stated they voted to remain and 5% stated they did not vote.

As for your claim about 'many, many trusted sources' your link also states;

During the literature review phase it was not possible to identify any source of data on farmer voting choice for Brexit so it cannot be included here to provide a comparison for the study.

In the study population there's quite a variation across the regions e.g.

46.8% of farmers in the South West voted leave, 46.8% of farmers in the South East voted leave and 67% of farmers in Scotland voted leave (although it should be noted that the study didn't use random sampling).

I have also been looking at multiple sources for farmers’ views and votes on Brexit. I agree with you

Is it? I've never heard that before.

Farm families tend to have at least one child that wants to take it on, if there's two or three children, it's unlikely that all want to stay in farming. it's an unwritten rule that the siblings that move out of the farm to follow a different path don't generally inherit anything at all upon the death of parents

It’s also misleading to try and calculate how many farms are worth +£3m and say those farms are affected. To state the obvious inheritance tax only matters when someone dies. So it’s farms of £3m+ /unmarried farmers with £1.3m where a farmer HASN’T done any sort of inheritance planning that would already alleviate it and either can’t do any planning before the deadline or can do but will be effected by the 7 year taper rule (which drops down a lot after 3 years) AND has a farmer die. How many is that going to be each year? That’s why governments estimates is so much lower than NFU.

Itll get even smaller because this change wil stop farmland being a IHT loophole which will bring down the value of land and so bring some farms out of that valuation bracket.

Can someone enlighten me please, why children of farmers have to be farmers, do they not have any choice in the matter? Do all and each one want to? Is there pressure to do so? I even learned here that apparently they also are encouraged to marry other farmers so money remains in family? Sounds like royalty from middle ages? not every business owner's child repeats the same business ad infinitum. It seems like an archaic expectation. Sure farmer kids grow up learning from young age etc but same can be said for others? There's though no expectation for paying no tax when a carpenter passes on that his kid will take family business and go on?