Wear wellies to school to support farmers?

[GrumpyDullard]

My DC's school sent out a message this afternoon to say all kids should wear wellies to school tomorrow to support British farmers. I googled it and found out it's a campaign to oppose the removal of the inheritance tax exemption from agricultural land.
We're a rural community so a lot of parents will support the campaign, which is fair enough, but it seems wrong to force everyone's kids to take part in a protest against the government without even explaining what it's about. I'm afraid my DC will stand out if they're not in wellies, but I don't want to take part in this.

Oh my goodness it’s madness!

They need to at least call it "to support people who own millions of pounds worth of land and don't want their children to pay inheritance tax"

Bollocks. Farmers can easily escape paying IT by moving from a sole-trader state to a limited liability company. You need to question why they haven't.

its not clear to me how wearing wellies supports farmers. Unless it’s rubber farmers, and the initiative results in an uptick in sales.

I think ‘buy seasonal vegetables’ or ‘choose local meat’ might have more of an impact.

@Ifailed I'm pretty sure that was a joke. At least, I hope so!

It's anything above £1 million. That's basically one or two farm buildings and a bit of land. It's not cash. No one can pay that sort of inheritance tax, so the land has to be sold. Who do you think is going to be able to buy it up? Other family farmers that grow our food? Or land developers, the mega rich, and the mega industrial farms?
Aside from this viewpoint, it is odd to involve children politically.

I think it's a good cause and it's OK to discuss it in school as long as reasons why are given and children can opt in or out.
I disagree that schools should be free of politics entirely, I think it's important to discuss these things appropriately to foster children's social conscience, British values and debating/oracy skills.
E.g. watch a newsrojnd clip then discuss, "some people think this, some people think this, what do you think?" We have to model respectful discourse and what protesting is, and it's good to do it both with historical cases e.g. Rosa Parks, but also recent events e.g. Great Tunberg and current issues the children care about.

That is, of course, very different to a teacher saying "vote Conservative because I do and everyone who doesn't is evil" etc., but give the school some credit, I am sure they are doing this in an appropriate way.

I thought that was £1 million per person, so the threshold for a typical farming couple was £2 million? Plus the farmhouse is not included in this, so the real threshold for a family farm is somewhere near £3 million?

It is unethical for teachers to express political viewpoints to children. I’d point this out to your headteacher OP.

The school I volunteer at is doing this tomorrow too. We are rural too but they have explained it as an opportunity to educate children on how and where our food is grown and that it is good to buy local and British. It is more of an appreciation of local farmers and market gardeners. It is not a political move at all but just an effort to create awareness of where our food comes from. I guess they have 'invited' you so you don't have to if you don't like it. I very much doubt it is a political statement-schools have far bigger things to worry about than farmers getting taxed.

Yes, but that doesn't mean no discussion of important issues that involve politics can take place in schools. It's incredibly important that children are aware of issues that affect their local communities, and the different sides of all these complex things. To just ignore it is worse, in my opinion.

Typically there is one surviving parent that passes on the land. If more time was allowed, then land could be passed on earlier if the farm is in joint ownership to be able to get that amount of tax relief. Else, '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.'
It sounds a lot, but it's land not cash. You need a certain amount of land to even make farming viable after all the other costs.

I don’t even understand what it’s all about to be completely honest, I’ve just been reading up about it. How are children expected to know what they’re supporting by wearing wellies tomorrow? Saying it’s to show support for farmers is misleading when it’s more political and nuanced than that. It sounds to me from the little reading I’ve just done like the new policy supports tenant farmers and people who would like to farm but can’t afford to and weren’t lucky enough to be born into a farming family. So which farmers would we be showing support for in the protest? I don’t particularly want to support Dyson, Clarkson and the like.

Im trying to understand the farmers issue. The Govt state a direct descendent(s) can inherit £1.5 million (or £3m if jointly owned farm) tax free before then being subject to 20% tax which is interest free and payable over 10 years. It says this will impact the 500 wealthiest estates and almost 75% are not impacted at all by this change. https://www.gov.uk/government/news/what-are-the-changes-to-agricultural-property-relief

So it seems as if the issue is for the biggest 500 farms and not wanting to break those up. If one of those 500 estates is worth £4.5m then 3m of that is subject to 20% tax if it was owned by one person. So £600,000 payable over 10 years so £60k a year. The first step for me as a farmer would be to explore joint ownership, then to explore gifting as the 7 year rule also applies.

Using children to push your political opinions is pretty low to be honest.

Typically there is one surviving parent that passes on the land. If more time was allowed, then land could be passed on earlier if the farm is in joint ownership to be able to get that amount of tax relief. Else, '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.'

If it's spouses (is that the plural of spouse, it doesn't sound right??) I assume that tax free allowance is passed on like normal IHT? The standard £500,000 tax free allowance can be passed to a spouse which is how you get regular estates not liable for IHT up to £1m. Does the £1m tax free allowance for agricultural property get passed on in the same way? That would make it £3m if owned by a married couple who are passing on their house to direct descendants.

I'm a farmer so obviously want the support but this isn't the right way to do it. Schools cannot instruct parents to protest and they shouldn't assume other people's political beliefs either. In rural communities there will still be plenty of people who support or are nonchalant about the policy, plus it's not as though the government will care about kids wearing wellies. The only thing I can think is that they're inviting the local press along.

You know you don't have to follow requests like this?

It's just a way to open up conversations about current events and the importance of farmers, your kids won't be brainwashed to rally against the government!

A lot will probably have to wear them tomorrow anyway so a bit meaningless

No Its not. It's closing a tax loophole thus requiring farmers that have wealth over a very high threshold to pay their fair share of tax.

No it's unacceptable that a school is asking parents to take sides on a political argument - and visibly too. It could cause divisions in the community.

I also tend to think the tax is needed so that wealthy landowners don't get to own pieces of the world indefinitely. Land should be made available to people in case they wish to farm, keep horses - follow their dreams.

A journalist put it really succinctly earlier this week. The last sentence really resonated with me:

" . . . a key principle that has underpinned all human societies – that we have a right to share in the bounty of inherited assets – will be reaffirmed. Whether ancient Rome or feudal Europe, societies have taken the view that just because an individual got lucky and came out of the right womb, they are not entitled to inherit everything without paying some levy or tribute on their inherited wealth. After all, wealth is enjoyed in a societal context and society made a contribution to the existence of the wealth.

Inviting children to stage a political protest at school is completely inappropriate. There is a difference between discussing politics and what different politic beliefs are and basically forcing parents to fully disclose their political beliefs through their children for all to see. Not acceptable in any shape or form and children cannot possibly have enough understanding of the complexity of the matter to choose for themselves (and again shouldn't be encouraged to do this at school anyway).
This has the potential to cause rather a lot of unnecessary divide and conflict.

It's a pair of wellies. 😂

#straight over their head

I hate schools doing things like this.