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.

Honestly though labour see farmland in the UK as wasted property development opportunity- they know as a country we can import cheaper (poorer quality) food from abroad and they don't care about food security.

Food security affects us all. It won't be a niche subject when food prices double.

I'm from a country in Asia with no farms, due to the infrastructure
It's expensive to eat meat. No fresh milk, only in cartons. Eggs no where as delicious and fresh as what you get here. As such,
I have so much respect for the farmers in the Uk. What they do for this country is provide best produce, that I only wish I grew up with!
I hope people in the Uk can show them more respect and support, I certainly will! Importing meat and dairy is super expensive, I don't think people realise how important farmers are.

Dairy farmer near me, boosted his herd made him £373k profit last year & if you work out the profit Bennets farm made on their 6500 avg litre per day herd, it works out at over £230k profit for that part of their business alone.... yet they are still bitching.

Why exactly should my children be faced with IHT on our family home @40% to be paid on death BUT a Farmer pays just 20%, has a £3m allowance AND gets 10 years to pay?

Farmers like to moan, their next moan will be lower farm subsidy, which many voted for.

But even if some part of a farm is sold, it will be farmed, its not like the land vanishes plus pre 12, they has no exemptions, yet family farms persisted.

Twpsyn arall.

But land owning farmers have done nothing to for locals. Many stop people from accessing right to roam, charge high rents for rentals or vote Tory to the detriment of poorer communities who can’t afford local organic food or farm shops.
Now they want support. 🤔

Good point. I feel like we need to help more on this

It's a lifestyle, and generations of knowledge of soil and growing conditions in each farm, passed down through families.

You clearly don't understand.

YANBU, OP.

I wholly support the farmers, know many of them and know just how hard they work and for how little. The government are outrageous on this.

There are fairly straightforward ways to address any issues with inheritance without creating these awful, morale destroying situations for farmers.

And yes, food security should be something we are focussing on and doing our best to increase, not decrease.

Why are farms the only type of business worth over £2m that you can inherit without paying inheritance tax?

many other family firms have existed for generations- and inheritance taxes are paid.

Farming background here. An extremely cash strapped upbringing. I have memories of having no new clothes and having to put food back at the checkout, but it was still an absolute joy of a childhood. We are most definitely not the landed gentry. My parents are some of the most hardworking people that I know who do it for the love of farming through knowledge of the land and food production that has been passed down generations.

Farmers really are the custodians of the uk countryside providing quality food for us to eat. Why this sector is being targeted is absolutely beyond comprehension.

We do. If we were ever to sell land and other assets we would be subject to CGT the same as everyone else. We just aren’t able to pay tax on the homes in which we continue to live, the seed from which we grow our crops, the machinery we use to farm, the land on which we grow stuff, the livestock and everything else WHILST continuing to operate as a business.

How many other businesses require such a huge value of working assets to generate such a small turnover? In our worst year we generated £4k in profit. We have fallen into the higher rate tax bracket ONCE since 1935.

The government intends to renege on the delicate social and political contract that has kept food prices artificially low for decades. It will decimate British farming.

I am fed up with self pitying farmers whinging. The majority voted for brexit which showed their stupidity in losing valuable EU subsidies and making trade so much harder.
So many don’t give a toss for the environment, wildlife or their own animals. It is profit and pleasure dressed up as tradition all the way.
Living in places most people can only dream of and expecting to get special treatment because they produce food. Well they don’t do it from altruism or to benefit anyone except themselves and their pockets so why should they be held up as community minded saints that we must all revere?
Bloody Clarkson being their poster boy is about right. By his own admission he bought his farm for tax avoidance and then monetised it with his mindless tv series.
I live in a rural area, have done all my life and know numerous farmers and I have yet to meet a genuinely poor one.
Make the buggers pay the same as everybody else.

That’s not true. You can qualify for 100% exemption from IHT pretty easily

If farmers with >£1m farms are not willing to lift a finger
to do a bit of COMPLETELY LEGAL tax planning
more fool them

but then they did vote for Brexit so we know that many are fools

This is not my experience at all. Farmers are the backbone of my community. (I'm not from a farming family, but have lived in a farming area all my life.)

Farms round here aren't producing organic foods, they produce wheat that goes to hovis for breadmaking, milk that goes to Arla and wood that goes to Ikea for furniture making.

What townies don't seem to get is a farm isn't a playground to walk dogs in, it is one huge food factory. You wouldn't expect to stroll through a car production line, why a food production line. It can be dangerous - machinery, exposure to sprays, danger from animals.

Those moaning about why farmers voted for Brexit, just take one day in the life of the farmer faced with bureaucracy and red tape you wouldn’t believe.

Brexit promised less red tape, that’s the reason, and completely understandable if you have 2 brain cells

You aren't being targeted, in fact with a £3m threshold, 10years to pay back and a 20% rate, you re being treated with kid gloves.

Plus for younger farmers, you can plan to hand the farm over and avoid any tax at all, which is what what happened pre 1992

However, i would like to see exemptions for older farmers, who wont have time to take IHT advice.

@hamstersarse More red tape now.

If it’s valued at £2m my understanding is it’s unlikely to be caught by IHT, because of the £1m exemption which can be left to a spouse to create £2m, plus exemption for family homes. There’s a good Dan Neidle thread on this.

Also, the price of farm land has gone up BECAUSE it’s such an attractive vehicle to avoid IHT - so to say the threshold is too high because of high land prices misses the point.

My family own a small family farm. Grandparents own 60% and uncles were made 20% each when they were around 30 (so they'd committed to farming long term). In order to attract any inheritance tax in this (perfectly normal) set up the farm would need to be worth £5million. And I don't think you can reasonably argue that a farm worth over £5million is a small family farm.

I am from farming background and I absolutely do NOT support those threatening strikes.

Surely a farmer could sell up, invest the 2 million (because I think it’s actually over £2+ million that gets iht taxed) and live off the interest.

If you have more than 2 brain cells you'd have realised that leaving a single customs market would
ADD red tape
ADD bureaucracy
ADD costs
REDUCE profits
REDUCE flexibility

Well yes, but it was obviously a rubbish promise. How can adding barriers reduce red tape?
Plus it was obvious farming would lose subsidies.