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!

We're nowhere near self reliant.

Ok, well if that's the plan then they can introduce this inheritance tax plan but exempt any farmer who dies within 7 years of introduction, giving the other farmers time to hand over their farms?

I can't find anything definitive. What I've found out is that since 1984 farmers have been exempt from IHT due to a series of tax relief measures and APR came into being in 1992.

I imagine that before that farmers paid IHT like everyone else. I think what's happened is that the super rich have bought up farms to invest in and save on IHT and that pushed up the price of land.

I could be wrong and am happy to be corrected.

Agree. These will be the same people who persistently vote Tory, fucking the most of the rest of us over in the process and not giving a shit.

So, yes, I'm finding it hard being sympathetic to their 'plight'...

@username358 in the 1980s people were paying approximately 25% of their household income on average on food.
Today it is approximately 13% so half.

If people want farmers to go back to paying IHT then they will need to double what they pay for food.

Can you afford that? Can everyone you know afford it?

Do you know if what I said in my post was correct? I'd be really interested to know. Many thanks

Right, and do small holdings have the economies of scale or even equipment to produce food to sell on to supermarkets? No. You're basically talking about an allotment level.

For PPs saying "oh well my family can't get away with not paying IHT on 800k", is this what we've become? A race to the bottom?

People don't one day decide to become a farmer and spunk £3m buying a business. It doesn't work like that. Farms aren't rolling in it. Just go look up how much a combine harvester costs and see how fast you get to £3m in assets.

Really obvious who on this thread has any knowledge of the countryside and who doesn't.

Land for sheep farming is less valuable. You can't grow wheat or veg on a sheep farm.

Best and most versatile land (suitable for growing a wide variety of crops) is higher value and so more likely to be taxed but we still need those farms to stay whole and economically viable because we still need them to grow our wheat, oil seed rape etc.

Return on those farms is still not enough to pay absurd rates of IHT, which is fundamentally damaging to our food security, The change to IHT needs scrapping asap.

Also could you give me a link on how much the average household spent on food in the 80s compared to now, that would be really interesting. Thanks

JFC the ignorance of this!

I actually don’t know what to say but I’m grateful that I can afford the significant hikes in food prices ahead of us. I hope you can too.

The NFU are saying that 75% of family farms will be affected.
Government figures are incorrect. They are based Soley on APR - Agricultural property relief .
They do not include BPR which has also been brought in

APR - covers the land, buildings and farmhouse
BPR - covers all the other assets. The machinery, livestock even the estimated value of the crop in the fields.

Combining the two will bring 75% of family farms over the threshold for IHT.

At the same time subsidies are being cut by 70% in some cases
Tax on fertiliser is going up by £50 per ton.
Tax on domestic vehicles is going up over 200%
NI for employers is going up.

ALL of these factors are going to cripple British agriculture.
Food security will be decimated.

The likes of Clarkson and Dyson buying land is a red herring. That land is still in the business production of food. It's doing what's needed.

This budget will do nothing to deter those who seek to reduce their IHT bill as it will still be the cheapest way of reducing IHT bill.

And this ludicrous tax makes us even less self reliant.

Not intelligent !

They are going to tax everything farmers have (including tenant farmers so the argument of "rich land owners" is invalid). That's the house, if there is one (possibly fair enough), the plant (tractors, combines etc are eyewateringingly expensive, even second-hand, so I'd suggest flogging them now if you have them and hiring in), the "flashy" 4x4s (try running a farm using a Fiat 500, really unfortunate that farmers sometimes turn up in them elsewhere), the produce on site - bad luck for anyone who needs to transfer at peak times for crops or livestock. It's another "because some people can't behave themselves (i.e. those who have bought farmland as a loophole) we'll hit everyone as a quick fix".

The NFU are saying that 75% of family farms will be affected.

Assuming that they don't pass the farm to family more than 7 years before they die?

That's just not true at all. Many many big landowners rent agricultural land out at very reasonable rates for tenant farmers. They do so because they don't need the money for the rent (it needs to cover its cost not much more) because the payoff comes in the form of reduced IHT.

I personally know a farmer who rented land for 17 years from a landowner. Then when landowner was considering selling up he sold it to the farmer at a really good price and guaranteed the farmers mortgage!

They can't leave £800,000 either. There is no money. They leave a factory for growing food. The only way to pay the tax is to sell the factory, which means the UK loses food production, we lose farming skills, the whole country is worse off.

No point in the NHS treating people if people are starving. No point in having education if children are too hungry to learn. Before anything else, we need to be able to feed people, and this change puts that at risk.

I think they would be subject to capital gains tax instead then, which would need to be paid on transfer into the company.

So what you're saying is, that when this tax comes in all food production in the UK is going to stop and we can't import food so everyone will starve?

@selffellatingouroborosofhate that's why farmers had subsidies.

The food you buy is subsidised by the government and has been for decades.

After the war in the 1950s we had a serious issue with malnutrition and issues like rickets. Food was short and expensive. The country on its knees after the horrors of the 1940s. In order to combat that the government subsidised lots of essential foods. So the public were paying artificially low prices for things like milk. They then paid the farmers a subsidy to partially make up the shortfall.

@username358 if food production here reduces we are very vulnerable to the instability of global markets.
At best it would mean price hikes at worst if there were to be another major war or global disaster we could have serious food shortages yes.
You only have to think back to the panic in 2020 with covid to see the potential for chaos

I'm shocked how many people don't know basic socio-economic history. I learned this when I was 11...27 years ago.

The trouble is you don't know when you're going to die.
If you gift it on then you can't benefit from the farm in anyway after that. So you can't pass it on and remain living in the farmhouse for example. Even if the person you pass it on to is also living there.

And what if people don't die in the right order. Farming is considered to be the most dangerous profession in the UK now. What if the oldest generation pass it on and the younger generation die first?

@LettyToretto indeed it's terrifying!!! Because so many people are sleepwalking into making shocking judgments without having any idea of the implications of what is going on.

This budget might well be viewed as disastrous as Liz Truss's budget in the future.

Many people think that because the markets didn’t instantly react to the Labour budget and the value of the £ didn’t fall through the floor like Truss’s clusterf**k, that it was a sensible budget. But that’s not how these things play out - it takes time for people to see where the devil in the detail is. You can’t take an extra £40bn a year from the public/business without effect. We will see a period of stagnation (we’re in it) and then we will see decline. Redundancies, inflation, interest rates staying high (possibly increasing). There is no potential for economic growth.

How they agreed a 15% pay rise for the train drivers while decimating farms says a lot about their values: pay the urban, unionised workers more, screw the countryside. They’re encouraging people to turn against farmers and some of you are falling for it… literally attacking the hand that feeds us because they’re all “millionaire farmers” who’ve been “avoiding tax” (despite the fact that tax wasn’t payable). And yet nothing in this budget affects people who are actually wealthy.

No, I'm saying this badly thought out tax reduces our ability to feed ourselves, pushing up prices and leaving everyone else less well off.

It will cost the UK far more in the long run, than it gains the treasury and needs scrapping.