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.

I get that but if the farm is big enough, some of it could go, surely. However if the family don't want to do that, fair enough.

It may not work out as badly as the op thinks, things often don't. There's not much point worrying about it now, dad could live to his nineties.

Oh yes, who needs farms after all?

jesus wept!

Yes sums it up perfectly

I have experience of both sides, I have a family farm background and can imagine this is just awful for those people who have had farms going back generations and make little for the amount of work done but see it as a way of life.

But where I live there are huge estate owners who dabble in a little farming to get the breaks while actually working in finance/banking and barely visiting the estate as they spend most of the time in London or in one of their many other properties. They are the uber rich and I'm not sorry that they're going to be hit.

@LBFseBrom so what happens when you get to the next generation, sell another bit off? They don’t generate much income now, so how will selling bits off help long term?

Handing it on to the next generation doesn't work though. What if people die out of expected order?
Farming is considered to be one of the most dangerous jobs. Farmers are killed every single year on farm. Tractor or machinery accidents, issues with livestock or slurry.
That's before you add in unexpected illnesses etc.
passing it on could actually make it far worse.

@Sooverwork she wasn’t going to inherit any money.

But where I live there are huge estate owners who dabble in a little farming to get the breaks while actually working in finance/banking and barely visiting the estate as they spend most of the time in London or in one of their many other properties. They are the uber rich and I'm not sorry that they're going to be hit

What have they got to do with anything? Also, you've just assumed everything that you've written here, as you cannot possibly know any of this for sure.

That’s typical of the response they give though. It’s nothing more than envy from people who think the world owes them a living and aren’t prepared to put in any hard graft themselves. They have no appreciation of the work it takes to build and manage a farming business. Their ignorance is astounding.

China?? They seem to be buying land all over the planet. I read something somewhere that they can't produce enough rice in their own country so are buying land in other countries to produce it.

And what about all the regular farming families. This policy won’t affect the super rich wealthy landowners will it? But it will affect all the normal farmers. (And I come from a farming background too)

Unlikely. We are not talking big farms at all here. A significant proportion of the land could go which would make a lot of farms unworkable.

For those who are interested look up Joe Seels on YouTube or Olly Harrison. Both did quite informative vlogs yesterday on the situation and how it will affect them

It's hard to define how people feel about land that they work and touch and walk on.

I don’t understand if farming is so awful and the suicide rate is so high why would you want to take over the farm? Cash out and have £5m

Because it's a vocation.
What's the saying about knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing?

Op I am so sorry your family is in this situation! I think what Reeves did in the budget is a disgusting attack on farming families who just need to be left alone to farm, look after the countryside, the flood plains and the environment and above all produce food to feed the nation. We need food security as a nation, particularly with climate change and war on the horizon, there might come a time when we can't import as much food as we do. I hope this will be reversed. Farms are businesses that can't afford to loose a huge portion of their assets and continue functioning. Making a living out of farming is tough enough as it is. I know this government wants to build all over the countryside but that's extremely stupid and short- sighted. Please get your dad some mental health help and keep a very careful eye on him if he is talking of suicide, in other words make sure you check up on him frequently and try to keep anything that he could use to hurt himself out of easy reach. We had to do this with my daughter recently, I know supervising an adult continuously is going to be harder. We know a family who has just lost a father to suicide, it's devastating.

I don't think it's the rich landowner farmer who kill themselves? It's the tenant farmers. This may help them because maybe you can sell a bit of the farm to them?

Im so sorry this is happening. It’s honestly horrific- were going to see farms up and down the country put up for sale in the coming weeks and months. The government let us down at every opportunity.

If farms have to sold or parcels of land to pay tax who is going to be buying them? What are they going to do with them? How much will they pay for them? We barely managed to feed ourselves in WW2. How will we manage if we have to rely on more and more imports where is the food coming from. What will happen to our countryside it is managed and maintained by farmers.

I think all farmers should lobby King Charles about Inheritance Tax on farms. I'm sure he will be affected by this move.

Exactly. They would rather hang on to the one million owed in tax and not sell any of their assets or get a loan than their father live out his natural life.

Some of the messages here are awful. OP the practical thing to do is to take legal advice on how to minimise the farm on transfer.

You wonder why there's no empathy and then there are comments like these?

Many people are working hard only to see most of their hard earned money go straight to a landlord - they have no hope of ever having a real home or anything to pass onto their kids.

That's not even counting the sick and disabled living on a pittance.

Do you not realise how it sounds to the millions in similar situations being told they should have "sympathies" for people, who at the worst are going to have sell up businesses for a substantial sum of money?

Many sympathies OP. There needs to be so much more information in the public domain about what UK farmers actually do and better advocacy for farmers. Did the govt. think this tax would get past without too much scrutiny because many people don't understand how UK farming works? Supermarket shoppers still don't think enough about where their food comes from globally and the conditions under which it's produced. Do they understand what food security means and what happens when farm after farm is sold to 'developers' piecemeal?

While I'm very much for family farms continuing, I would, though, bind the transfer of land according to use. And there needs to be more conversation about farm workers. But I am concerned about the many burdens on UK farmers.

You are completely missing the point. In order to pay the IHT, they will have to sell the farm. Which is their livelihood. They probably employ other people too, who will lose their jobs. They will probably struggle to find a buyer, as it will be farmland, not land to build on.