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.

They're working hard on retro fit for older properties. Courses are being run as to how to achieve this. It won't be cheap but will improve existing properties. Double glazing and loft insulation were only a start.

You can't have heat pumps in apartment blocks ao it's exterior cladding and interior dry walling. Insulation between floors. Underfloor heating. The effort of getting as near as possible to passive housing will require ingenuity and money.

And furthermore, if this farm is worth 3.5m and you're saying the land is "not the main value" - ie lets say it's worth 1.5m of the 3.5m - your married neighbours still won't be paying IHT on the actual farmland because you don't on the first million each. So it shows how wildly generous the rules are even with the changes.

Husbands cousin in Cheshire bought a neighbours farm. No children wanted it. He kept the fields. The sale of the farmhouse paid for the whole purchase. People with money want a farmhouse but not the land.

Look at the barn conversions which go for mad money.

I really don't understand all the farmers moaning about being 'asset rich, cash poor.'

Around me (London) there are older people whose kids have left home and pensioners living in £5 - £20 million pound houses. They are 'asset rich' for sure - but this is because many of them might have bought the houses for a fraction of that in 1978 or whatever. Doesn't mean they are 'cash rich' though. And their kids will be paying inheritance tax on these properties - obviously. What's the difference?

I do know about three men who became multi-millionaires to the tune of £300 to £500 million or thereabouts and the one thing they all did was bought land in Norfolk or the NE and became some sort of 'farmer' (ie. hired people to farm a small part of it). The whole purpose of this is that land was exempt from IT. Now it's not.

Also, surely the days of "I was a farmer, so my kids will be farmers'" are gone? There used to be generations who has all been miners, or shipbuilders etc - not any more. Times change. People move, re-train, diversify, adapt. In particular, the meat industry is going to have to drastically adapt regardless of IHT because people are eating less meat already and diets are changing. There used to be fur farms - well thank god they're gone. Hopefully meat will go a similar way, especially intensively farmed meat. That should be taxed out of business, imo - sooner the better.

Hopefully meat will go a similar way, especially intensively farmed meat. That should be taxed out of business, imo - sooner the better.

Calabria5 would imported meat be allowed?

@38thparallel ,what would you grow on the moors?

38thparallel - hopefully not!

Yep. She pulled an application in Kent as planners recommended it for refusal.
Shes just deciding for herself now with no knowledge or experience of either the area or planning.

Which post does this refer to, please?

@38thparallel ,the one you had emboldened someone else's comment, I atted the wrong poster.

I think it probably is true in terms of the raw numbers, which presumably come from HMRC data or some other source that can be readily checked, but the author spoils it a bit with the arithmetic and reasoning at the end.

First, 0.004% of 209000 is 8.36. So there's at least a zero too many. Let's take 117 as the number — that's 0.056% of 209,000.

And also, 117 is the number of inheritances per year. So if a farmer spends 50 years running their farm, that would give 50 * 117 = 5,850, or 2.8% of farms over a 50-year period (assuming that nothing else major changes, thresholds are adjusted for inflation, etc).

It's still a tiny fraction, but not quite as tiny as the poster would have us believe.

There is also the question of what happens on the second death — presumably if Mr Farmer dies and leaves everything IHT-free to Mrs Farmer, then Mrs Farmer dies she can't double-dip Mr Farmer's £1 million exemption, so they will each have to plan their wills so that the children get half the farm on the first death. But the key point is that the vast majority of farms are worth under £1.325 million anyway, and that's the absolute lowest point where IHT might kick in even if both Mr and Mrs Farmer die without wills and the only heir is a nephew.

The vast majority of farmhouses will have an agricultural tie on them which ties the house to the land. You cannot just sell off the farmhouse!

@samarrange most farms will be over the 1.3 million mark you state. It's not just the land and house that is being taxed it's everything!

The house
The land
The equipment
The livestock
The crop in the ground
The fertiliser
The seed
EVERYTHING counts towards the tax!
When you add it up you very quickly meet the million pound mark! And it keeps rising. Only very small holdings will fall under threshold.

If they had set the bar at 10 million then it might be workable. It's just far far too low.

Which again brings into question. How do they reach that value. If the property has an agricultural tie, then it's value should be based on what it can produce in terms of a business. It should not be treated as a stand alone domestic property.

I am willing to bet that when your friend bought the farm, the value as a percentage of the then working wage was considerably less.

Small farms are unlikely to have expensive equipment like combines that only get used once a year. They get contractors in for that.

YANBU. I will be wearing my wellies on the school run tomorrow in solidarity with the farmers.

Bless your heart.

Oh, well this is a bit awkward as I didn't research your posting history at all.

If you recognise yourself in my previous post, I'm afraid it's because your views align closely with the stereotypical right-wing hypocrite I was describing.

Check the post: "Treasury estimates of estates including agricultural land". The whole estate. Unless agricultural prices have somehow quadrupled since 2021.

And again, with even the most modest of wills, the actual threshold for a couple is £3 million.

I don't support them and I do support the change in the law. Kill the demand from IHT avoiders and land prices will fall anyway - they're ridiculous presently, and anyone wanting to enter farming or expand their farm needs to be a lottery winner to compete.

I suspect your over egging your pudding with regards to the value of stock. I used oil seed rape just as an example, If we said a conservative 2.5 ton yield per acre, at a value of around £350 a ton, each acre being worth £700. Multiply that by say 90 acres as the average farm size you are talking £63k in stock in the ground. I haven't done the maths on other crop, but I'd be very surprised if you could find any that will start bringing values up by the hundreds of thousands you are hinting at.

Dairy farm average cows say 100. I don't know the value of a dairy cow producing milk. But I'd be surprised if it is over £1k each unless they are a desirable blood line. That's still only £100k. A generous £200k for a parlour.

It is going to take a helluva lot of machinery to get over £1.3m. Never mind the £3m with the advice that is being given.

@ARealitycheck I'm sorry but you are wrong!

A dairy cow in the uk would be upwards of £1500 pounds X 200 in milk and another 100 in dry cows and you stock £450,000 in cows alone - that's for a relatively small dairy farm.

Add in 600 head of sheep at £100 a head = £60,000 in ewes + their labs at £70ish a head = £84,000 in lambs

That's nearly 600k in animals. That's for a modest farm.

Straw prices are insane atm so 1000 bales of straw at £40 a bale is £40k in straw

Feed could be £50-£100k in feed

Fertiliser is pushing £600 per ton now and is going to go up. So could be thousands of pounds worth of fertiliser

Tractor to buy is over 100k
Bailers could be anything up to 200k sometimes more.
Quad bike 15k
Trailers couple of thousand each

Handling system for cattle probably £20k
Sheep handling another £10k
Feeders, troughs, gates,

You seriously have no idea of the setup costs and equipment required to run a farm!

Our farmhouse has been separated from the farmland.
No idea how the solicitors for the previous owners did it, but they were tied together for centuries.

An acquaintance bought a house with an agricultural tie. He kept a goat for a while, and five figures of legal costs later he freed the tie, doubling the value of his house. It was a modest bungalow originally, and now it is a spawling California house, with a good view and position. In the occupant's defense, they live there: it's not AirBnB.

I'm not saying the tie can never be removed under any circumstances. It can under certain circumstances for sure. But it isn't a solution for the majority in this situation.

A family member went to look at a house not that long ago with a large garden but no land as such. Well less than an acre anyway. It was in the middle of a housing development and the surrounding land had been developed for housing on one side and an industrial estate on the other. It still had the tie on it! The developers couldn't get the tie removed 🤷🏻‍♀️ and so were left with a big farmhouse which they couldn't sell as nobody could live in it and satisfy the tie 😂