To ask why you support the farmers, regarding inheritance tax?

[WheresFluffy]

Just that, really.
I'm interested to know why people support, or not, the farmers regarding the inheritance tax changes.

YABU - it's been done to death
YANBU - learning why people believe things is important.

Nrtt but the f we don't have farmers - we don't have food.
HTH

This keeps being said. We don't lose the land, if one farmer stops another will use it. Ensuring it is farmed appropriately and preferably by someone from a young farmer starting out is important.

That too simplistic after what’s gone on there’s a lack of people wanting to go into farming why would you
As for next generation farmers they have to sell the farm they’ve inherited to pay IHT then use what’s left to buy a small one with massive mortgage do again why would you

Doubt People would be queuing up to buy and run farms

There are scores of tenant farmers desperate to own and farm land. There are scores of youngsters leaving agricultural college who would love to do the same. They cannot access this because large farms have bought up the land, and only their offspring will own it.

Stop believing the nonsense that farmers only do it for love of the land. It is just not true.

Do these scores of people leaving college have the hundreds of thousands into the millions to buy the farm

and same for the tenant farmer they have got a share million in the back pocket to buy the farm

Well hopefully removing this tax break may reduce the value of farmland and take investors out of the marketplace.

Monsanto doesn't produce any food. What it does produce is glyphosate herbicide (Roundup), already used very widely by British farmers, both to kill off weeds at the end of the growing season, and to dry out cereal crops (which we then eat- nice). See that weirdly orange looking field? That's glyphosate.

If anyone genuinely cared about food security, they'd be kicking off about the vast acreage both here and abroad used to grow crops destined for animal feed- a massively inefficient way to feed the population, when the same land could be used for crops for direct human consumption. But they don't. Funny that 🙄

@ARealitycheck

Yes hopefully more new entrants into farming with new ideas - perhaps investing into Agri/ photovoltaics (Holland uses this technology and they are the second largest food exporter in Europe despite being a small country).

Why should only the same families be allowed to farm generation after generation? Give others a chance too!

Nonsense. "Scrub"- in other words brambles and young trees- is an incredibly rich habitat, especially for birds such as whitethroat. Left to its own devices it will eventually progress to closed canopy woodland. Contrast this with your average bright green "improved" field, which is largely a monoculture. Biodiversity in this country has plummeted drastically since WW2, due largely to industrial agricultural practices.

And, it’s just land which may not be near your home, or your storage, or equipment. Farmer can't just build a barn or shed. Not allowed. Can NOT build your accomdation. And then if you are livestock farming … transporting, council making you your animal phosphate or whatever is limited.

Go on an agricultural land for sale website … and pretend to be a young farmer starting out and find yourself a farm. Or just some chunk of land being sold to pay tax and figure out where you will live and keep your stuff etc

Interesting that Jeremy Clarkson will be remembered as the guy who caused the Labour Party to impose inheritance tax on farms.
I wonder if back in the day, Clarkson ever called into HBOS complaints/customer service and got Rachel Reeves on the phone …. And now she’s getting her revenge.

As pp has said, small farms are not just any business. Land sold out of farming may never return. Farming is important for us to retain some food security and to help manage land. It's also culturally important in my view. Small farms can be vulnerable even if notional land prices make them look wealthy. The IHT rise is crude. If Labour want to stop hedge funders buying land to avoid tax and pretending to farm, they can regulate land use and what constitutes 'farming'. This obligates real farmers too, as would restrictions on farm land being sold to 'developers'.

But, for diferent regulation to work, farms need to not be valued on notional land / property prices, the businesses need to be viable and there need to be many more national conversations about land use, bio-diversity, food security, access to land and how the environment outside cities is managed. Part of this is a conversation about planning, house-building and supporting infrastructure.

I used to live somewhere where the (literal) lords of the land sold dozens of farms and serious tracts of farmland in one fell swoop, evicting tenant farmers and workers, isolating other farms and natural resources, causing them to sell, destroying wildlife habitats (while pretending they weren't) with all encouragement of the regional authorities greedy for poorly-planned expansion. The produce that county was famous for is now made somewhere else. Thousands of expensive £475k - £750k) commuter houses with inadequate infrastructure stand there, pricing out local families. A crude IHT rise doesn't begin to unpick that lot.

Maybe re-scrub the bright green golf courses and bright green public parks, or your garden. To get back to 1940 biodiversity …

I'd be well up for all of that, tbh (peers out of window at slightly out of control garden alive with birds. Well, I would if it wasn't dark right now, anyway 😆)

I support them.

To pay inheritance tax would in many cases mean selling off land.

The nett result is thousands and thousands of ugly ‘Lego’ houses and the consequent very real food shortages.

They really haven’t thought this through.

Can you substantiate that claim? It sounds more like the scaremongering that was on the news the other day by Farmer's daughter Rebecca Wilson. So upset that her £10m inheritance was going to be affected.

see times article below - the value of the farm is very different to the money in the bank. Or another type of inheritance which adds to your life as opposed to being your job for the rest of your life.

Our farm’s valued at £8m — under new rules we’d barely break even

www.thetimes.com/article/bbc6ce97-a306-4780-a2dc-90977a6d958c?shareToken=0ee75a69779223e6e2ebd0a176676d7f

You do realise you don't actually need to work there after a parent passes away?

It is pretty much unanimously agreed that agricultural land has increased way beyond inflation, and that values do not represent what they actually produce. Something does need done to return land values back in line with their profit value. The current system clearly doesn't work. Will IHT changes help. I don't know, but I suspect the biggest shouters are those with £8m inheritances to protect.

Of course I realise that!! Don’t you?

so they can sell all the land to developers for the best price and we have no food security. This isn’t just about the farmers, it’s about all of us. I want to be able to buy locally grown food no imported crap.

What you don’t realise is they don’t want to sell. They don’t want to sit on millions, they want to continue in a way of life that they love and what puts food on their table. A job they have basically been doing as charity. And with everyone being so ungrateful that why should they continue. And this has far reaching consequences. Our whole countryside down the drain.

im assuming you live in a town? I’m assuming you haven’t spent 5 mins with a farmer and ever. And it shows.

"Well hopefully removing this tax break may reduce the value of farmland and take investors out of the marketplace."

I'm not entirely sure it does that though. It still shelters 50% from iht. For these investors, better paying 20% iht than 40%

It could end up being the worst of both worlds - penalising actual farmers, but still keeping land prices high.

I think you’ll find this dubious honour will go to Blackrock or Bill Gates, not a minnow like Jeremy Clarkson!

You have a much too romantic view of farmer families. Not every farmer child wants to continue to farm by default. And no they aren't putting food on our table as charity, or are on some kind of altruistic mission since they are born.

Yes, wildlife habitat has been lost but 'green fields' are also habitat, as is drained land e.g. the Somerset Levels, the Fens, Romney Marsh. And to turn scrub into woodland requires management by humans. Virtually all Europe's landscape is man-made (even places that look like wilderness are not, they are often the product of grazing e.g.sheep), and the habitats it supports are a result of changes made over the last 10k years.

And what happens to all the domestic animals?

Viscount Rothermere is (or was as of 2020) the 10th largest landowner in Dorset with a farm of approximately 4700 acres.

He is also the controlling shareholder of the Daily Mail. Interesting, I think