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!

Interestingly the farmers seem to have done a good job of raising awareness of the impact on their industry. The budget also reduced the rate of relief from 100% to 50% for non-listed shares so being a company won't help. We don't seem to see much talk on the all the other family businesses which are affected when the shares are passed on to the next generation.

Its always been the rich getting away with shit - so they bring in rules to stop them, and they still get away with it

From facebook
Nobody likes a Tory
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Inheritance tax will impact the following long suffering toiling farmers:
1. Richard Scott (Duke of Buccleuch and Queensberry)
One of Scotland’s richest aristocrats.
Previously faced a farmers’ revolt after doubling the rent for land on one of his estates.
2. Anders Holch Povlsen
Denmark’s richest man and biggest shareholder in ASOS.
Reportedly owns more than 89,000 hectares of Scotland.
3. The Duke of Atholl’s trustees
Owns a 58,000 acre sporting estate among other things.
The current duke reportedly lives in South Africa.
4. Hugh Grosvenor (Duke of Westminster)
Inherited the £9 billion Grosvenor Estate aged 25, which includes 140,000 acres across Scotland and England.
5. John Whittaker
Billionaire and chairman of property business the Peel Group. Lives on the Isle of Man.
6. Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al-Maktoum
Ruler of Dubai.
7. James Dyson
Supported Brexit then moved his business to Singapore.
Very upset about the IHT relief. FT says his share could be about £122 million.
8. Robert Warren Miller
Duty free shopping mogul whose land is held by an offshore firm registered in the British Virgin Islands.
9. Zambrano family
Mexican owners of Cemex, the world’s second-biggest building materials company.
Owns 25,340 acres of UK farmland.

But that house isn't your livelihood. It isn't a family business. It isn't used to feed us all.

Your mum can use it to pay for her care if she chooses to go into a home or it will be a windfall for her heirs when she dies. It's just not comparable to a farm.

I agree, we live in a very rural pro farming area. And every Joe and Liam from the little strip of council houses in the village who won’t get any inheritance because their parents can’t even afford to buy property is so riled up about what Rob down at the pub whose family own a massive estate with 300 acres and like 6 houses are saying about the current government. 🤦🏻‍♀️

We own a rural business and have a farm (though I wouldn’t say we are farmers). If our business wasn’t doing well and we were drowning in debt and making below minimum wage and working 7 days a week, we’d either diversify so it was more successful (we had to do that during lockdown) or we’d sell up to someone who could run the business more successfully. Just because you’ve been handed a family farm doesn’t mean you have the business skills to run it successfully. And I don’t think the government should be supporting people who just paddle along with loads of assets receiving government support and tax breaks who maybe just need to call it a day. I know there is a real emotional connection to the farming heritage. But I wouldn’t expect my dc to kill themselves to run our business at a loss if it wasn’t working and I wouldn’t expect the government to financially support them to do it, especially when there are better uses for those funds.

Farming won’t stop just because Bob who is a fifth generation but shit farmer sells up to someone with more experience and resources to farm and does something where he can better support himself.

Why he bought the land in the first place is irrelevant.

No it really isn't.
He bought the land as a tax dodge and is now upset its no longer a tax dodge

I probably don’t have skin in this game because my family farm is marginal land.

my take on it though is that for some farmers this is just another kick from the government, one that pre election made assurances that inheritance tax would not change.

The things that really hack me off though, is how marginal so much farming is. Weather is one of those things that you can only do so much about, so I won’t winge about that, but it is a constant concern.

Our produce is some of the best in the country, but my family have very limited ability to set a price, and the price we get doesn’t necessarily reflect cost of production. In the past this has been covered by subsidies - which you could consider to be a supermarket subsidy, as they were able to pay lower prices to the producers. Now there are environmental grants, which I quite like, it suits our farm down to the ground (pun totally intended).

None of my neighbours make their total living by farming their own land, everyone has a side hustle or three.

Farming is having hugely bad press as being the worst environmental polluter - that is certainly how it feels anyway. I really struggle to get my head around this, as food is a basic necessity to life, we grow stuff that absorbs bad stuff and we feed people with the result. I’m not sure the aviation Industry can say the same. Obviously though, there are improvements agriculture can make.

As for farmers being able to give the farm to the next generation before neatly dying 7 years later, does that work? Doesn’t the giver have to then gain nothing from the gift? You can’t give a house to your child then continue to live in it until you die and have it be exempt from inheritance tax, and family farms are strongly linked through multiple generations.

This has been a bit of a brain dump, sorry for that, I won’t be back for a while as I need to go back out into the snow and tuck in my animals.

If their rent is cheaper then perhaps their parents can afford to pay more for food. A huge chunk of benefits go to paying private landlords who charge more as they have to cover the cost of the mortgage debt and also they are competing with young renters who cna pay more but can't afford to buy (renters on average actually earn the same as owner occupiers, they just lack the deposit which is high due to higher land and house prices). I mentioned I am a homeowner in London as an owner of a flat in London, the main reason for my property value being what it is (and the equity) is the high land value. Not the bricks and mortar from the 1930s. But I wish that land values are lower because I dont want London to continue to be an inheritocracy and prices being what they are relative to earnings will drive that.

Also only 30% of our food supply is British.

How on earth would redistribution help/work?

Apart from making farms even more uneconomic than they already are?

Many of my clients are family run small engineering businesses. They build vital infrastructure and employ people in good jobs in deprived areas but they don't get any tax exemptions.

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

Simple. Because newspapers and broadcasters are all owned by the same people who own the tory party and they want you to think the current government are a bunch of lefty loons so you'll vote against your own interests and reinstate their puppets next GE.

completely different scenario. I want to eat. Farms get broken up- no food. It’s as simple as that!

no engineering companies to fix the farm equipment, no food

Not my mum. My friends mum

It's not as simple as that. That's just using fear tactics.

A lot of them are not growing much food. They are being paid not to.

I have every sympathy for farmers who have been struggling for decades to make their farms turn the tiniest profit. But looking at footage of the protest online, it's being shared by Jeremy Clarkson, Lady Bamford, the Duke of Rutland's daughters etc. Own goal city.

Surely mechanics fix farm equipments not engineers?

They have a good publicity machine.

It's all bullshit. Ninety minutes with a good accountant and a good lawyer would secure their land against any inheritance tax liability.

You will note that none of the really large landowners in the UK are protesting. They have no need. They took the necessary action to avoid IHT years ago.

I have zero sympathy for the farmers who are protesting.

This is spot on.

Of course this policy could be seen as part of the NetZero and new town plan. Two birds one stone.

Get rid of the SME farms and rural businesses and out source food production to countries less likely to want to dick wave lead the G7 on eco credentials.

This doesn't take into account that pasture in this country is our biggest carbon sink. This carbon will be released into the armosphere when dug up for building and lost as a carbon sink of course.

Of course they will want to put new towns where the land is the higher values to encourage the party donor businesses building industry. This leaves most of the north with little investment again.

We always get the same government whoever we vote for.

Ok, ok, ok. Let the IHT go ahead and every farm can become a lucrative Daylesford Organic and we can pay £20 per Brussel sprout.

So what if JC bought land deliberately as a tax "dodge"? That's what the government and posters are telling farmers to do now - just transfer 7 years before death. That's a tactic all the same too.

If the government want to tax farmers, well, bloody well make King Charles pay IHT on his inheritance...

Will you want sympathy in few years time for paying high food prices?

I live in a rented property on a farm, the landowner doesn't farm but there are 3 tenants earning a living from it - squeeze those who own land for long enough and there will be no food except that imported from other countries, all of which has an environmental impact and most of which comes with lower animal welfare standards.

This budget has also put a carbon tax on imported fertiliser but no carbon tax on imported food, and double cab pickups (a rural work horse) are now classed as passenger vehicles so increasing the tax.

These IHT rules apply to all family businesses by the way, not just farmers so think hard on that - all those entrepreneurs making money, yes for themselves, but also for the country, and passing their businesses down the family are liable too.

What exactly do all of the farmer bashing people want the countryside for? It's not a just an urban playground (although right now that's what it seems this government is aiming for) , it's a working environment and produces valuable food and income for this country and employs thousands of people.

I live rurally, I don't farm, didn't vote for Brexit and certainly didn't vote Reform and am absolutely sick of this "they're all rich bastards, what are they whining about?" talk. There are some rich farmers, there are more who are not, there are some rich urban businesses and business people, and plenty who are not, do they receive the same level of vitriol?

Yes, IHT rules need updating but more consultation and a more specific targetting of people/companies might have avoided this situation.

I don't really care whether this tax is fair or not. So what if it's only the richest who pay. We need to be protecting our farms. Is the amount raised really going to be worth it?
My grandparents are small-time tenant sheep farmers, the landowner will almost certainly be subject to this. If land needs to be sold to pay, the farm will have to shut down. Multiply this all over the country. Even if the land remains in use, farms will be disrupted - which means food supply will be disrupted. It's a slippery slope.

Also only 30% of our food supply is British.

It’s 60%