To support UK Farmers

[TheHateIsNotGood]

And due to KS's inability to face them in Wales today they are now thinking of going on strike. Because the govt are being too stubborn to reconsider how they apply IHT on working family farms. By all means close the loophole that allows the 'landed gentry' to take advantage of the agricultural exception but not with so blunt an instrument.

I was hoping to add a post to an existing thread but there isn't one despite it being headline news today.

Go on then, what time of year was that and why did they need to get rid of subsidy money?

having some of last years subsidy money still in the bank (unheard of in my family, it was gone on paying outstanding red bills within weeks) had zero impact on what subsidy money you would get the year after.

perhaps you are confusing farmers buying equipment at certain times of year for tax reasons?

Here

Each devolved Country has it's own payment scheme.

Also to reply to a previous comment 'we aren't talking about slick adaptable business men in suits here we are talking about mostly men, mostly in their 60s and 70s who mostly left school age 14'

Most farmers are very switched on to how to get the most they can while paying the least. Most have been farming the subsidy rather than the land for years. They employ sole land agents and massive land agency companies like Savilles who are skewing the market value of land with it, as they benefit again with increased land values.

we should also be concerned about arable farm land being covered in solar panels

Subsidies were an EU and UK government policy to keep European farmers farming in the best interests of their citizens and food security. At the time they were considered the best way to compete with US and Eastern European farms where land is half the price, welfare standards are significantly lower than in the UK and farms are enormous.

Our business is viable at present but is unlikely to be so if these proposals are not amended. I don’t think many other businesses would be viable if their working assets were taxed (again) every time one of the business partners died. Is that how your business is taxed? What is your working asset to profitability ratio? What does your business contribute to your wider community?

Is your neighbour asking for a tax loophole to avoid inheritance tax? Is he getting large sums of taxpayers money for running his business?

I think you have to hope that common sense element comes back into the picture. We are casually acquainted with a very successful self-made chap, who has been in the right place at the right time, and has assembled a very significant landholding. I have no problem with him making good decisions and profits, especially given the hundreds of thousands he has invested in beautifying his properties, acres and the rural skills and businesses required, but the notion that him buying more and more acres to shelter his millions, and pass them intact to his DC, who almost certainly will not be a farmer. I have no problem taxing his heir.

But I look over a river valley to a small livestock farm, so I watch the activity there every day. They have (about) 150 acres and a milking herd. The farmer is up at first light to bring the cows into the milking parlour, move the electric fences so they have new grazing, and then does it again late afternoon. There are almost no days when there isn't activity, whether smelly muck spreading or milking or herding. Every pound that guy earns is deserved.

Did you read the page you just linked?

the very first line of it is 'The government is phasing out subsidies', if you didn't.

have a think about how farmers deciding put their land into the environmental land management schemes detailed on the page you linked might also have an impact in food sustainability.

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I think you clearly have an axe to grind with a small sample of farmers in your local area. None of that is true in the area I farm in which is upland hill farming in a national park. It's mostly small generational hill farmers and large estates with lots of tenant farmers who have been there on assured tenancies for multiple generations and have commoners rights.

The subsidy system was corrupted from way back when, not sure of your age but I can recall farmers selling their quota for large sums and thus creating much larger farms.

But imagine if I had say a multi million tractor sales business. I've done OK for myself. If I sell it while alive I pay capital gains, If I leave it to my family I pay inheritance tax at 40% above the £325k threshold within 6 months. Yet when Farmers are asked to stump up above circa £1m over a 10 year period at a rate of 20% there is outcry. Does that seem fair?

I did.

The government is phasing out subsidies for land ownership and tenure, and improving the financial offer and services to farmers and land managers ...

The environmental land management (ELM) schemes will support the rural economy while achieving the goals of the 25 Year Environment Plan and a commitment to net zero carbon emissions by 2050.

Subsidies are being repurposed. I mean you did ask!

And those tenant farmers will be the beneficiaries when the land is sold off by the local estate and they can buy at more realistic levels.

So what do you think that actually looks like and the impact on food security?

Not sure you are getting that everything you eat was produced on farmland by a farmer at some point. Less land being used for farming means less food.

Not less land, not less farmers, not less production. Just a change in the farmer, with the tenant farmers getting the chance to own and earn. Not pay a landlord.

Yes, I do also know this.

I was very happy in the EU, but 17m people weren't, and we are where we are.

They want everything owned by big business or the state.

I think we should be supporting farmers and don't agree with the inheritance tax change. The farmer I know had almost total crop failure this year because the weather has been so appalling. I try to buy local and avoid upf, I would much prefer the government to help farmers as much as possible and tackle Big Food instead.

Businesses used to be able to claim Business Property Relief, the same as farmers could claim Agricultural Property Relief.

This new IHT law limits both to £1m, so ‘other business owners’ will also find their descendants need to sell off part of the family business assets just to pay the IHT and keep the business trading.

Not a totally insurmountable problem if you run a manufacturing business, you can sell the factory and outsource production to China. But outsourcing is not really a solution if we’re talking about a family run pub / hairdresser / farm / undertaker…

And again @Papyrophile has said and stated it well. Do not imagine that every farmer is 'a pig in shit' moneywise, many aren't. I actually believe that many UK farmers are an indigenous people whose culture should be protected.

Many 'richer than you' people have recently invaded and 'gentrified' the countryside, resulting in the increased valuations of working 'farmhouses', their outbuildings and surrounding land. Unfortunately, they don't know how to actually 'work' and 'farm' their land. A bit like Clarkson but without the TV Show.

Yet, these people with Degrees in Polenta from Islington actually believe they know how to 'work' the land.

Actually this decison should have the opposite effect and put farms back into ownership of those that actually work the land.

Unlikely. Developers will buy it at high prices instead I expect.

Are you joking? Where do you think a tenant farmer is going to find a couple of million from? The land won't drop in value, just because Clarkson and Dyson won't want it anymore doesn't mean that National Trust/ United Utllilties etc don't still have deep pockets and it's not IHT exemptions they are after.

Planning permission is highly unlikely to be given on good greenfield land.