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.

People talking about small farms-the budget allows for an extra £1m relief on agricultural assets on top of existing relief-this meaning most small family farms won’t pay anything extra.

No many farmers can start a farm from scratch. Who can really afford 2 million to invest in land and machinery to then get a mediocre income? I don’t think the inheritance tax is a good idea but equally I have seen lots of farming families benefit from their low income- kids getting full uni grants after posing for photo shoots on their massive £££ tractors/ brand new landrovers / 18 years of tax credits whilst getting free farm diesel, no mortgage and claiming the EMA. It’s more complicated that this but I would like to see a level playing field for everyone.

Last remaining good things about the UK…

• Internationally competitive, quality education sector

• Beautiful countryside and greenbelt

Starmer/Reeves: hold my beer… 💨

I think many people don't realise that farming is such a low margin business and machinery is so expensive that you can only break even if your farm is a certain size, yes c £6m if in thr south of England as you will be paying hundreds of thousands to sow and harvest.
However I blame Jeremy Clarkson for openly saying he bought his farm to avoid IHT he sort of put a target on our head.

If they are in the East then they must have noticed the acres and acres of root vegetables?

I can only imagine the grief your dad must feel OP. 💐

I’m disappointed by the spiteful posters on this thread. This makes me fundamentally worry about the UK. The security and quality of our food.

This was such an ignorant thing to do. I hope they reverse it.

A disaster for farms near me. Farms that have been in families for many generations, with all the knowledge of the land and place that carries. Yet again a government thinks of cities and the huge business farms in the Home Counties, but not of far flung rural areas, where the loss of farms is changing the landscape and the quality of our food production. Here when a farm gets sold now it often gets broken up, the house sold to people who want a farmhouse, so will pay over the odds, but don’t want to farm, the barns get sold for conversion . The land then gets tacked onto other farms so we end up with larger individual, more industrial farms but the loss of smaller family farms, with their individuality and history, and the wider diversity of farming.
I totally understand your anger OP. Families will have trained a child who wants to eventually take over the farm, my dc go to school with a lot of lads like this , who will work the farm and would have eventually taken it over.

I’m sorry for your loss and I’m pleased for you that the title hasn’t affected you. It has affected me and a number of other people based on the numbers who have ‘thanked’ me for my post. It’s entirely possible to raise these issues without using phrases like ‘do you need your parents to die within a particular time frame’ especially given that this man is talking about ending his life.

I have some sympathy for the issue and can understand that it’s a worrying time on a personal and societal level. I don’t think that excuses this thread title.

You should be upset that the country will be losing another farm. We are all fed by farmers.

Do you really, genuinely, feel frustrated by farmers buying tractors and 4 x 4s? Do you feel the same when the cafe near you upgrades its coffee machine, or it's kitchen? Or your office buys new computers?

I do think the cap is too low however - land can be ‘worth’ a lot except it isn’t.
Our family farmland is stretched across a vast protected area - can’t be built on or developed and we are caretakers really - so the value of that land really depends on whether or not you can farm it, lease it for farming or run businesses like small camp sites on it.

Op won’t inherit any money just a massive tax bill

Your dad can pass the farm over to the next generation, possibly several members to dilute any future IHT. If he does this before the new rules kick in there will be no IHT due and no 7 year clock ticking as long as the assets being passed qualify for the relief. He needs to seek immediate advice but this can be sorted. Best of luck.

Where did I say they didn’t work?

This is what I can't quite get my head around. This policy change is going to have a lot of negative consequences which seem very much against Labour's values. This includes pushing the next generation of farmers out of their livelihoods, loss of agricultural land for more housing, and moving productive land away from small UK businesses (aka family farms) and into the hands of venture capitalists, large international agri-businesses etc. Lets face it, on the whole, its not going to be other family farmers buying the land that needs to be sold off.

This will contribute to further negative impacts on UK food security as it becomes increasingly used as a pawn in global economic markets by faceless corporations who have no interest in producing food for people to eat (or in protecting the environment) and are only interested in money. And so we take livelihoods away from UK farmers, and make farming land something to "hedge bets" on or whatever it is that financial investors do.

OP - I am so sorry for your family's situation. This is really devastating news for a lot of farming families. We also have farming in the family, and lost a family member last year. Had it happened next year it would have been a very different situation for the business.

This exactly.

I am so sorry that you dad is feeling like this. I don't know a lot about farming but from what I have seen farmers works incredibly long hours in all weathers with not a great deal of monetary reward with very few days off. I find it very sad that a farm that has been in your family for generations may not get passed on to your son. It's not about the money it's about a whole way of living and what will we do without farmers growing our food. I would much rather a family like yours retains the farms than some big business takes it over.

Is it possible to incorporate the farm into a business, and if so wouldn't the shares qualify for Business Relief?

This may have been mentioned already sorry if so - long thread. And I also may not understand things fully either.

Is Agricultural Relief for inheritances being abolished?

And 240 acres is to the best of my knowledge not a particularly large farm. Clarkson's farm is 1000 acres as a point of reference with a fair amount unusable unless you are being paid a small fortune by Amazon prime to keep pigs in woodlands and "farm" blackberries. Anyone who's ever watched it knows just how lean the margins are.
I think this policy change will have appalling consequences for small to medium family farms as the threshold is simply far too low even though it feels like an enormous sum of money. Because it is a large sum of money but it will force sales left right and centre with the possible exception of people who have alternative sources of wealth which this tax is presumably aimed at.

Thank you for the explanation.

I must confess my ignorance, i don't know much about farming. From the fact (someone else mentioned upthread) that most farming land is now owned by corporations rather than families, i assume it is profitable, or corporations (presumably with no emotional attachment) wouldn't engage in this business? Is this because they are large enough to dictate prices to supermarkets, or is there something else that I don't understand?

Can agricultural land be sold to developers? Several posters have suggested OP sells land to raise the revenue and maintain the majority of the farm. But isn't agricultural land protected for that use? So could only be sold to other farmers, who might be disincentivised by the same scheme?

OP, I'm sorry you feel under tremendous pressure. I'm not in your situation. We aren't a wealthy family (both teachers) but we are also hit by some policies and don't have enough "spare" to mitigate the effects it all have on our lives. I'm not saying that we are unfortunate in the scheme of things, we aren't, but it is still sad when you realise life won't be what you hoped despite your planning and hard work. I hope your father is able to get over the shock soon.

Farms arent a field with a few chickens. Of course they are going to be worth a good few million.

However I have never heard of farmers being accused of being lazy. Dont people realise that if UK owned farms have to be sold who will actually end up buying them? Large companies, people with money from countries where wealth is very dodgy (I dont need to list them out).

Then our prices go up and we pay more and more. I also heard on the BBC that Reeves has counted all farms even someone who owns a field as farms and then claims it is only going to fit xx % of farmers.

She needs to hang her head in shame. There was an owner of a small group of salons in tears on Sky News saying the NI increase is going to massively affect them and he will have to put prices up for US.

Hold the line OP, only 4.5 years till the country hopefully sees sense and votes out this awful government. They make the last one seem good!

This is what I can't quite get my head around. This policy change is going to have a lot of negative consequences which seem very much against Labour's values. This includes pushing the next generation of farmers out of their livelihoods, loss of agricultural land for more housing, and moving productive land away from small UK businesses (aka family farms) and into the hands of venture capitalists, large international agri-businesses etc. Lets face it, on the whole, its not going to be other family farmers buying the land that needs to be sold off.

Tbh this is very on brand for this incarnation of Labout. You should see what they and the SNP have planned between them for rural Scotland.
These are parties with little understand of or interest in rural communities.

And the £5m Left over…
they need legal advice about the way forward, whether that is to sell some land now or not and put that money aside for the forthcoming tax bill or to change the farm to a business model or to change ownership now, OPs Ddad may well live another 10 years, or to think about mortgaging or finance options etc
They need to start exploring options asap … and I do wonder whether the government may raise the cap on this one.
The reality is though - the rest of us have been subject to these kinds of IHT laws for a long time now - if our families are lucky enough to be over thresholds.

Business property relief is also changing in the same way as APR.