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.

I'm not sure how much sympathy we should have for the second child of the farmer, who is in a different line of work altogether and would be using their share of the inheritance to pay off their mortgage.
But maybe I have completely misunderstood how all of that works, in which case please let me know what actually happens.

In a lot of long-term farming families, there will be an understanding that the non-farming spare children will not inherit anything because they have not contributed to the farm. They haven't earned a stake in the farm and shouldn't be allowed to jeopardise its continued existence by forcing a sale of some or all of the farm to realise their unearned inheritance.

Also, if there is no expectation that a farm that has been in a family for multiple hundreds of years will be sold by the current or immediate future generations but will simply go on being farmed (for not much profit) in perpetuity by members of the family, the farming heir is basically viewed as just the latest family custodian in a long line of family custodians stretching far into the past and far into the future all of whom will never personally profit from its sale because they won't sell it. This is one of the reasons farmers have tended to not be particularly concerned about formally passing on farms before their death, because it hasn't mattered who the technical owner is, the farm just continues on.

This is one of the problems with the IHT change. It treats inheriting family farms like inheriting your parents' house - like someone has gained an asset that they will immediately sell, making themselves a few million quid richer in the process. That isn't how a lot of family farmers view their farm or the inheritance process. Their lack of intention to sell the farm means that they will never get the £3million or whatever it has been valued at for IHT purposes but they will be taxed as though they will, meaning they will be required to pay out money they don't have simply to continue on farming as they have always done.

Lets be honest. Farmers have been 'revolting' for as long as living memory. Is there ever a year goes by they are not complaining about something.

Your argument about multiple siblings and arguments when one wants the family home and one wants the money, can be applied to many estates. Not just farming. You could find that with lower tax breaks that the land value reduces, so that the amount the sibling continuing the farm actually needs pay less to buy his/her brother out.

UK farms with a value of over £3m mostly became that way by buying out their neighbours over the years. These are no longer the little farm with an old man running around with an old grey fergie. They are large businesses. British farms are actually on average bigger than a good proportion of the continents, France as an example is made up of smaller farms.

But the same argument could be applied to any number of family owned comapanies. Say Grandad started a building firm, when the Son got it on Grandads death he paid IHT if applicable. Moves on to Grandson, same again. Again they may well be reasonably asset rich having eg bought land to build on. But that's not to say they are wealthy people.

Go back to an earlier post of what do people need, Food, Water, Shelter. He is supplying shelter to people but gets no tax break. Has the farming community done any shouting for him!

That's not quite the same thing. Yes, we need shelter but we are not generating shelter for everyone in the country every year. We're adding to the existing housing stock not starting to grow it from scratch on an annual basis. And the building trade tends not to go down through generations in the way farming does. I also can't see how a building firm is asset rich in the way a farm is, nowhere near (in terms of land, massively expensive machinery, livestock, etc).

There are no poor farmers. But plenty of farmers who think they're poor.

''Yes, we need shelter but we are not generating shelter for everyone in the country every year.''

What? You never need the services of the building trade in some shape or form to maintain the family home. A plumber never darkens your door, Electrician, Plasterer, Painter Decorator!

''the building trade tends not to go down through generations''

Really? I can think of several local firms just off the top of my head. I'd bet that is the same for the rest of the Country.

Sadly I find the farming community very vocal when it is something that affects them and pull on the public heart strings with the 'we feed you' cry. In reality they aren't fussed at all about the same struggles the rest of us go through just to get by.

What? You never need the services of the building trade in some shape or form to maintain the family home. A plumber never darkens your door, Electrician, Plasterer, Painter Decorator!

Not every single day, in order to survive, no. And no one actually needs a decorator.

But these firms are out there at somebodies door ensuring their home is of a homeworthy standard. Why are they less important than a Farmer?

You really don't understand the difference between having a well-maintained or decorated home and having food - and on a population level? I suspect you are being disingenuous.

The gleeful callousness shown on this thread as “revenge” for Brexit is so depressing… not to mention stupid.
Who wants food costs to increase even further?

Heat pumps are not viable in all new builds, solar panels depend on orientation of building and of course weather. Achieving a passive house adds to the cost of a construction Somewhat inconvenient when government are pushing for affordable housing.

The easiest solution which the Welsh government did at one time was compulsory purchase of land at agricultural prices, hand the land to a builder with the agreement that X percentage of the properties will be owned and run by a housing association. Which will be unpopular with many.

the idiots in Brexit were the incumbent Gov Cameron’s who made no plans for an exit vote and were sure of a Remain and went on to call for a referendum -if they’d done the teeniest research into what would happen if we left and seen the difficulties, had no arguments against farage and Johnson’s claims -and done zilch to control immigration since the early 2000s which -if they’d bothered to leave London and actually engaged with a few of their electorate would have flagged up some serious risks - but. No ,why leave London - they knew best.

it was a protest vote to the arrogant twats in London. Unfortunately resulted in different arrogant twats replacing them.

Farms are really under threat due to changes in subsidy, its massive, the drop in income will have huge repercussions.. its not revenge, its a consequence of leaving the CAP

The IHT changes are minor in comparison & with 10 years to pay on a relatively small amount, its seems to me to be just another excuse to have ago at Labour.

Should be remembered that pre 1992, farmers paid the full amount and had no time period to pay.... yet we still had farms and local produce.

There is simply no reason for Farmers to be moaning about this, they are having a v generous exemption.

You think a watertight warm home with protection from the elements isn't immensely important to most peoples lives? Some in the farming community really need to take a step back from this idea that they are the most important people in the land.

The reality is, they can only farm when everybody else out there is doing their part. That means everybody from the men who laid the road, to the ones that built the tractor, the factory worker turning produce into food, the checkout person at the supermarket.

“Farms are really under threat due to changes in subsidy, its massive, the drop in income will have huge repercussions.. its not revenge, its a consequence of leaving the CAP”

The people posting with relish at the thought of farmers losing their farms see it as revenge. I’m sorry you misunderstood my post.

This was my thoughts at the very start of the leave/remain argument. Had succesive governments kept the original conception of the EU as simply a trading block, it would have been fine. Free movement of people in particular from Eastern Europe did undoubtebly reduce the standard of living and availability of work for a great number of 'blue collar' workers.

Funnily enough one of the biggest job markets for Eastern European workers was agriculture. The farming community weren't doing much shouting about the job losses in eg building trade, garages, hospitality etc.

I don't know with any certainty who this will affect or whether the threshold is too low. I'm pretty ignorant about the agricultural community.

What I do know in general is that whenever wealthy people are taxed more, they make an almighty song and dance about it. It reminds me of big business-any hint of them paying out more and immediately the talk is of the need to pass it on to the public. They won't want their profits affected!

As an aside, one of the reasons French farms tend to be much smaller than the UK's is French law on inheritance: farms are split between all the heirs, so farms get smaller with the passing of each generation.

A thoughtful post, @Phphion

How has thinking changed since 1984? IHR or Estate Duty before it was payable until then.

I would favour a phase in period for the current generation, and some sort of relief if the heir dies soon after taking over the farm. But this would need to be carefully worded or it would just become another loophole.

I'm off to support my friends in London tomorrow, no idea if it'll help but i couldn't not do something.

It's going to break nearly all the farmers i know.

Taxing farmers was not in the manifesto and apparently prior to the budget, some wealthy landowner from America met with starmer. He has been buying farmland in Europe and this may have given starmer the idea to go for farmers land and give opportunity for wealthy investors to buy them out.

Am trying to find anything concrete to support that!

I agree. It's so bad to see this, how does it help anyone

@RedPony1 that's good. I really feel for the farmers you're talking about

I don't understand the farmers' argument at all. "The big corporations will buy up all the land." "Food security will be lost." "There's no money in farming." Hmm. Why are these corps interested in buying land if there is no money in farming? Why are you so special that you get a unique pass to spend your life doing exactly what you want (if you don't like it, sell the land and get a standard job like everyone else) and then avoid IHT? I know lots of people who would LOVE to be farmers, but it's basically got the maddest entry costs of any career in the world. Why on earth should one group get to hang on to that special privilege? And let's not pretend that there's a special art to farming that can only be passed from man to tax-avoiding son. It's absolute bollocks. Of course it can be learned. Plus round where I live, the people who are most fucked off about this are the ex hedge fund managers who've scooted here to cosplay Mr Darcy anywhere. I have nooooo idea why people with assets of over 2 million plus think they should avoid tax while everyone else does pay tax. It's nonsense!!

And all this garbage about being a "custodian" to the land. Yes, LOADS of people would be quite delighted to be a "custodian" to a few hundred acres of countryside. Just because someone's been born into a life of extreme privilege, why on earth should that be subsidised (what isn't paid in inheritance tax is made up by - say - income tax paid by nurses) by the rest of us? Farmers are hugely miscalculating here. The people I talk to had no idea they've been avoiding IHT for so long.

Absolutely. Lots of talk about how we can reduce what we buy from abroad but now to do this to family farmers is the last straw. If a farm is carried on by family there should be no inheritance tax but if the family just want to sell because they have no interest then the tax should be paid.