Do you need your parent/s to die before April 2026? *MNHQ adding content warning mentions suicide*

[Spatulation]

Absolutely reeling that we're losing the farm that my grandfather bought, my father expanded and my son hoped to takeover.

The budget today means that we'll owe £1000000 in tax and we won't be able to get a mortgage as that's 5 times our annual income and over 35000 times bigger than last year's profit.

We own soil. That's it.

Agriculture has the highest suicide rate in any profession - sadly I can see it hitting an all time high in the next 18 months. My father (83) is already talking about it.

Tbh Jeremy Clarkson showed how little farms make. They spend tens of thousands on equipment to actually farm the field before spending money on fertilizer, seeds etc which cost many thousands and then weather permitting, and price permitting after a lot of hard work they make some money that manages to keep them over the next year.

But as discussed in the programme, they don’t do it for the money. It’s the way of life.

No one in their right mind would actually see the job of farmer being advertised and apply.

Is there anyway of transferring the farm over to one of you before this all happens? Have you spoken to a FA or a solicitor? There may be a way around this when you're wanting to carry on with the farm and it's not a case of just wanting it transferring to you to sell up.

Did you read the article in Farmers' weekly recently? I know it's pathetic of the Chancellor to not have considered farmers different from land owners.
There is going to be a lot of family farmers who will need a tax specialist.
There are ways to minimise that £1mdownwards. Same thing happened under IR35, loads of panic, then the tax specialists just started setting up Umbrella Companies, better contracts and that stopped the panic in the contracting market.

Ask your dad to not doing anything silly out of fear and concern.
Also of course, if he has a gun (licensed) and if you have a license, then you know what the requisites are. So if it's realised that he spoke of suicide and you did nothing to remove his access to guns, then you are on very dicey ground. If it comes to it, remind him of that, remind him that you could go to prison over it.

Personally I would get your father to speak to NFU. It is after all a union. I would suggest that it wouldn't take much for family farmers to show what would happen if the farms were no longer farmed. I know it wouldn't feel nice, because the general public wouldn't understand why there is no lamb or milk at Morrisons or Tescos, but Labour is about Unions. So perhaps NFU needs to step up.

I'm not a farmer, but have 3 frends who are, and they have already started discussing how to inform the gov that this is a bad idea.

You have my absolute sympathy and support, though I know that doesnt help the current situation.

Having watched Jeremy's farm on prime, I honestly cannot believe how much farmers have been shafted since we left the eu and how little they can earn for such hard work. This is shockingly bad on top of that.

There can't be many people these days who can afford to buy a farm and be a farmer from a young age, if all the farming families need to sell up and can't pass it down through the generations. The land will be used more than likely to be build on. Farming is a way of life and the country needs that for food production or we are literally all screwed. I hope things become clearer in the next few days and more positive. Labour have really messed up on this one.

You don't just own soil. You own land - one of the most valuable assets in the country.

Yes, I think will trusts will be the temporary fix for many, if a trust is created on death by the will, leaving the asset in trust for the OPs children with the OP having a life interest, then the IHT only becomes due on the OPs death, not her fathers.

At least that's the situation with a house, so I can't see why it wouldn't extend to a farm, I can't see anything in the guidance preventing that (I'm an accountant but don't deal with agriculture). I do know friends with a farm recently re-drew their wills to include an immediate post death interest trust for the children and grandchildren in respect of the farm.

My advice to the OP is let the dust settle for a month (so as experts can get their heads round the detail) and go and see a good accountant who specialises in IHT planning.

But this is where we get to unintended consequences- we don’t want farmland to get sold off so alternative land uses shouldn’t be considered for valuation purposes- only value in use. We should be aiming to produce more food within the UK as part of net zero targets- this government is just not thinking in a joined up way. No point in sticking up solar panels with one hand and importing loads of food with the other ( emissions from transport).

well if he transfers now and lives for 7 years there'll be no tax. should've done that ages ago.

Or put it in trust. i would seek advice

If this was really an unintended consequence of the budget, it show that the people who wrote the budget aren't able to do their job.

How much is the average farm worth? Are there any figures?

I hope more details come out soon. It may not be as bad as people fear and that there may be ways of planning now to avoid it.

I hope your dad is OK @Spatulation

Starmer, 2023: ‘Losing a farm is not like losing any other business, it can't come back. That's why the lack of urgency from the government…the lack of long term planning, is not on. You deserve better than that’

He lied to farmers & shafted them today.

Yes, there is such a thing as holdover relief. I am not an accountant or tax expert but that is a deferral (not exemption) that allows the recipient to pay that CGT, along with any subsequent liability, at the point of future sale. The IHT route was not only an exemption on paying IHT but generally allowed the inheriting party to be treated as having acquired the asset at the market value at the time of inheritance (so no historic CGT liability hanging over either - only CGT on any value increase AFTER that death). Hence, by doing a lifetime transfer, even with the holdover relief, we would to my mind have created...an unnecessary tax liability!

In any event, it was equally possible that the CGT holdover would have been the thing messed with in this budget (not to mention messing about with CGT rates).

Therefore, to suggest that this fallout is due to poor planning on the part of the OP's father for not planning to use THAT deferral rather than THIS exemption (which is the original implication I objected to) is essentially to fault him for not consulting his Rachel Reeves crystal ball re exactly what she was planning to fuck with!

I apologise for my exasperated tone, which was perhaps uncalled for, but it seems to me that the OP's father took a completely reasonable course of action based on the information available and I really object to him being painted as a bit silly for finding himself in this situation.

@Hunglikeapolevaulter utterly impressed by the word enshitification . Marvellous. 👏

I think there’s generally a really poor understanding of rural economies within government but particularly Labour because they don’t really care as rural constituencies don’t vote for them anyway.

Can you not use a trust

I'm afraid not, unless he stops working the land and moves out or pays OP full market rent then the gift is a "gift with reservation of benefit" and 7 years / taper relief does not apply.

@Xenia The problem for many farmers is that they are inter generational businesses and many older farmers don’t have a house to go to away from the farm. This would require money and they don’t make huge profits. Most farmers put money into the business and don’t buy properties. They have not had to worry about moving out. It’s very difficult for older farmers now. Yes, they must give the farms but living elsewhere is a big problem. Huge farms can sell some land but it’s not ideal and many would become unviable as they would be too small to be profitable and invest.

What do you think makes it valuable?

asking because so many people on this thread seem to be of the ilk that they (think they) know the price of everything, but the value of nothing.

if you can see that the land is valuable but you cannot see why this policy is a huge problem then you have an issue with cognitive functioning.

I think it was fully intended. The Labour Party has never been a fan of British farmers. I imagine they would like developers to buy the land so that affordable housing and solar parks can be built on it while we import our food more cheaply from countries where labour costs less. Then they can feel smug about the environment (solar panels) and raising the minimum wage whilst actually building on the county side, increasing food imports and relying on lower paid workers abroad.

Yes this. i have a friend earns just above minimum wage. She takes a couple of buses to and from work. She was just getting by as it was, but with the extra 1 pound cost per trip it will now cost her an entire days wage just to get to work each week. Thats before tax or NI or anything else. She does not have a job that can be done from home. She was in bits last night. I think that these politicians with their well paid jobs, their many and varied subsidised living expenses and their gorgeous pensions think ‘oh it’s only a pound’ yet have no clue at all what it means for real life people living real life lives.

I think the budget yesterday was so ill conceived on so many levels.

Totally agree. Some of these posters would have been first in line attacking the 'Kulaks' in the Soviet Union.

Could he get advice and bequeath it now or you could sell part of it to out the money away for the tax bill?

The general population doesn't understand farming at all.

I agree with this. I'm not a farmer but live in a rural region in Scotland and we absolutely need farmers. Go watch This Farming Life and other similar programmes to understand that having valuable land doesn't mean making money from it.

Only read the first page, but the utter ignorance and callousness of people on this thread. Shocking. Really shocking. I’m so sorry you’ve had such utterly thick arseholes on this thread OP.

Ah, the Starmer playbook