Why are a tiny number of rich farmers dominating the news cycle?

[InvisibleRadiator]

I've been reading around this inheritance tax issue, and the more I read the more I agree with government policy!

For starters the government thinks this will only affect the 500 richest farms and some think this could be as low as 100 farms!
x.com/DanNeidle/status/1852064433738256394

How on earth have such a rich elite managed to whip everyone up into such a frenzy, making it sound like poor old farmer Giles's kids are going to have to sell the family farm when he dies.
The following article explains how when taking into account the IHT property exemption, a married farming couple would not pay IHT unless their assets exceeded £3 million!
www.independent.co.uk/news/business/inheritance-tax-farmers-protest-maths-b2649181.html

And there are so many concessions such as having 10 years to pay, and being half the rate most others pay! And there are many ways to legally reduce the impact of the tax.

It's clear that wealthy investors have been pushing up land prices, and apparently farmers are involved in less than half the land sales now, when compared to 15 years ago.

And now this tiny band of super rich are trying to plead poverty? I don't believe a word of it.

This final article puts it far more eloquently than I ever could.
www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/nov/17/farmers-have-hoarded-land-for-too-long-inheritance-tax-will-bring-new-life-to-rural-britain

Good on Labour for standing up for the average person and trying to claw back a tiny portion of generations of inherited wealth for our public services!

Totally agree.

And it feels like the less wealth farmers haven't got the nous to realise they are just having their strings pulled by a handful of super wealthy landowners

(Memories of Brexit anyone)

Same. Agree farming is a super hard job, so many hours people don’t make min. wage, huge changes in machinery requiring loads of investment, lots to grapple with post-Brexit etc.

Yet surely using land as an inheritance tax wheeze as Jeremy Clarkson has done pushes up the cost of land, causing problems for actual (not TV) farmers?

Yep this 👌 My cousins are sheep farmers and have not even raised a problem.
Weirdly they are not multimillionaire playing at owning a farm!

Agree, op.

I don't know enough about it to have an opinion really but just in response to the £3m in assets. It is very easy for a not cash rich farmer with not vast amounts of land to have land worth over £3m if the land is flat and in a desirable location for housing.

These "gentleman" farmers couldn't give a damn about tenant farmers (famers who rent their farmland) and their issues and financial problems either.

Would that only be the case if the land has planning permission though? (Genuine question as I don't know the answer!).

hopefully the children of the future won’t know any different other than a reliance on imported food, poorer animal welfare standards, no food security or quality and the loss of land to very wealthy overseas corporations then.

Hmm... Maybe some sort of 'Right to Buy' for tenant farmers at a heavily reduced rate rather than inheritance tax on agricultural land might make make some wealthy consider less tax efficient ways of storing their cash!

But £3mil doesn't buy an awful lot of farmland

Obviously it's more valuable with planning permission but land is expensive anyway even if it were land to be added to another farm. Also the big housing developers will have a very good idea if they will get planning for an area before an application is even submitted.

Clearly written by someone who has absolutely no idea of the reality of farming and land prices. And how much of rather how little most farmer make to live on...
So in 5 years when you complain that your food bills have gone up ( when supermarkets already pay far below cost )
And you can only buy imported food ...which doesn't have to follow the same legal standard...
Think back to today

As always follow the money. Very rich people don't like being forced to part with their cash and they own the media.

When the farmer this morning said 20% would be £800,000 I couldn’t help thinking, my family can’t leave me £800,000 without paying inheritance tax so why is it different in farming? It’s hard to feel sympathy. Surely the land being redistributed could be a positive thing. I’d like to see pricing reflect the true value (that means for prices increasing but the price we pay for milk is putting farmers off dairy farming).

They're have been varying levels of inheritance tax over the years, and farming didn't collapse. One could also argue that genuine farmers wanting to expand are being pushed out by wealthy people wanting to avoid IHT.

There are always outliers caught in the crossfire, which is unfortunate.

And would you also be happy with your food bills increasing ??
As a smaller farm means increased costs and who is going to pay for these ??

All for the wealthy paying

Just not the farmers who are trying to feed you

Another problem is a lot of elderly farmers have been advised against gifting their land/businesses to family for years on the basis there is no need. So their sons/daughters may have been effectively running the farm for years but because it is still in their parents/Grandparents name when they pass away inheritance tax will be due.

when supermarkets already pay far below cost

I don't believe that for one minute. The money going into a business has to equal or exceed the money going out. A farm running at a loss would rapidly cease trading, like any other business.

Seriously!!!!!!

Go to your local farm and ask

Ask how much milk costs to produce

This is the ignorance we are up against

Yes, I think food should be more and I think people who own millions of pounds worth of assets should have to pay inheritance taxes just like the rest of us. I think the government should support farming in other ways but 100-500 millionaires unable to pass on their full wealth and having to pay inheritance tax like the rest of us isn’t something I feel outraged about.

It's always the same. You can take away mental health services, libraries, social care - all the things that disproportionately affect people living in poverty; you can see the use of food banks and homelessness go through the roof- nobody bats an eyelid. But come for the privileged and they all start to protest - and, more importantly, the media cover it. It sickens me.

Then you don't understand the situation very well.

People have done nothing for the past few years except moan about the cost of living and how much food has gone up.

Wait til so many farmers can't afford to farm any longer and so many farms have gone under.

The price of food will be extortionate, because much of it will be imported. Farm land will be built on. Food banks of today will be nothing compared to the food banks of the future.

Will people think it was a sensible option then?

The whole system is rotten.

I read a letter in the Telegraph today, someone was explaining that the council decided their parents farm was allocated for development, so by the time their second parent died the 2 acres was given a 'hope' value of ten times it's value as agricultural land. So for inheritance tax they had to pay £200,000 based on that virtual valuation (of presumably £500,000) which they paid. The land brings them only £150 a year income leased out, and 10 years later the council have still not given planning consent so the land has not materialised that value.
Two siblings paid the inheritance tax and one sibling has since died, having been fleeced of £100k based on the imaginary value.

Do you actually know any farmers? The ones I know are in despair over this. They aren't rich, they wouldn't have the money to pay the iht and so the farms would have to be sold instead of kept in the family. Simply because the value of the land. With no guarantee that land would still be used for farming. So we produce less food here and need to import more. Bills go up, food miles increase, food security decreases. I'm not a farmer, but I'm not in favour of this change.

Who is that land going to be redistributed to, though? Are you happy for our food production to be slashed? I've lived in a rural area for the last 18 years. Lots of farms near me have been sold in that time and not one of them is still a farm. They have been bought by rich horsey people or solar energy firms.

I'm really really sad you see it like this
If you could see the reality of most of us farming families
We struggle like everyone else
Working long long hours to produce food

The land isn't an asset to be sold like a car or a painting

It is producing food for you to eat

It's not about keeping the privileged in their castles ... it's about keeping food production in the UK