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.

It is easy to look at all the acres a 'wealthy' farm has, and all of their machinery and livestock and assume that the farmers must be minted. Far from it. The cost of looking after the land, animals, machinery, crops etc often means they are struggling to break even and are extremely cash poor. This is where the government's new scheme of making farmers pay inheritance tax falls flat on it's face. All of the farmers I know would be howling with laughter at the idea they are able to buy a brand spanking new land rover every year as well.

I’ve listened to the arguments and learned more about the farming industry over the last couple of days but I still can support the farmers on this.

Inheritance tax is wrong IMO, the thresholds and the the way it is implemented is fundamentally unfair. But if it’s ok for the rest of us that have an asset without the bank balance to go with it then it’s ok for farmers too.

I get that (some, not all) farming is essential, but so is housing and landlords don’t expect to get away without paying tax on their deaths so why should farmers?

So farmers might have to sell part of the business when the parents die but that’s no worse for them than it is for people who have had to sell their homes to pay inheritance tax.

Rules can be put in place to ensure that the country still has as much farmland as it needs so I’m not convinced about the argument that farmland will stop being farmland.

I'm really trying to understand why so many farmers are upset. Most farmers won't pay any IHT unless their farm is over 1.5m and 3m if the parent they are inheriting from has never been married. Then, if they are gifted the property 7 years before the death of their parent/s, then there is no IHT to pay.

I get that you'll be upset if you have to pay 20% above 1.5m , but I've may have read incorrectly that most farms are not above this value?

Does the 7-year gift rule not apply to farms? If you're so keen on your kids getting the land why not transfer the title once you hit sixty and give them a probable tax-free inheritance?

I get that you'll be upset if you have to pay 20% above 1.5m , but I've may have read incorrectly that most farms are not above this value?

Round here a £1.5m farm is barely viable.
When you consider the house, the land, machinery etc it doesn’t take much to add up to £1.5m of assets, but in reality that would be a very small farm which, unless you cleverly diversified, wouldn’t provide much of a living.

This is why it’s a problem. People assume farmers are rolling in it because they have farms worth a few million quid, but they’re barely scraping a living wage from it.

I support farmers because they keep me alive with the food they produce.

How do they even value the land?

I support the farmers in this because honestly the alternative position makes no sense.
Wanting to levy IHT on agricultural land, whilst knowing how farming in the UK currently operates, how the only people really doing it were born into it, how much farmers earn in reality, how as a 'fresh business' of buying land at £10k an acre to start farming is a completely unfeasible businesses etc etc, its a completely untenable position.

It's basically saying that you want to destroy farming, or at best have farming become the exclusive domain of megacorps with a huge drop in national food production because half of current farming is only facilitated by the charity of those doing it, willing to work 18hr days for what ultimately adds up to approx £4 an hour, if that.

@whenemmafallsinlove It is the hypocrisy I find galling. In this area they are looking to earmark large tracts of land for housing development - 4,600 houses. The farmers who own the possible development sites are not opposing the developments but very keen to get their land chosen. My father and I carved careers outside agriculture and probably did better financially as a result but although our farming relations might be cash poor they have lifestyle benefits that most people can only imagine and loads of opportunity to diversify and enjoy the benefits. No one likes paying tax but paying at 20% is still lvery favourable treatment.

I imagine that with planning this will be what happens, but as farms tend to be multi generational there won’t be time now for many to do this.

There’s also often inheritance difficulties in that a farmer may have two or more children who grow up and outgrow the capabilities of a farm to provide for more families, so I know of several local cases where an elderly farmer has stuck his head in the sand to leave his adult children to fight it out, which again leads to farms being split up and sold. In an ideal world they should be sorting these issues out long before they are an issue, but for the immediate future the IHT decision has the power to decimate farming.

😀😀

Indeed. There are no poor farmers round my way and on the news tonight they were all nicely turned out in Schoffel jackets. Is it any surprise they're up in arms about paying more tax?!

Well, to start, what visa would people use? The Tier 1 visa programme closed last year. Its replacement, the Global Talent Visa, requires substantial evidence of accomplishment in select fields. It is not easy to obtain.

Then, on what grounds do you think people would even want to do this? Neither Norway nor Switzerland has IHT, both are delightful places to live with higher standards of living than we have, you can easily survive on English in each, and yet I am not aware that people are clamouring to move to either to avoid IHT.

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It depends on how productive the land is. Scrubby land may only support moorland sheep so can be worth less, fertile arable land worth more.

My area is a bit of a mixture, but in general it’s estimated at around £10,000 an acre.
I’ve seen scrubby fields sell for around £4000 an acre, then I’ve seen arable sell at almost £20,000. It depends where it is and how much it’s wanted.

A local farm was recently sold to a millionaire from London who wanted a bolt hole, the land is now neatly mowed with nothing on it, and he spends his time Oop North complaining at the farmers for farming. Meanwhile that’s 120 acres out of food production.

I just think it's insane that a Government doesn't have a coherent strategy for securing its country's food production for years to come. There's lots of other ways they could get tax revenue, are huge companies like Amazon, Vodaphone etc paying their taxes yet? Or tax the bloody royal family ffs...

Don’t assume they can sell off a few acres for loads of £££ to property developers
The land is often for “agriculture only” and cannot be developed.

Farmers got to sell to another farmer … often just land, no home, no buildings. Not WORTH an equal % of the whole. Selling 20% of overall value could be 40% or more of the land as the big money is in the house, barns, buildings & equip,

Schoffel jackets can be bought on sale … don’t go out of fashion, and last a long long time. It’s farmer “fancy” … what do the non-farmers spend on a jacket? Fast fashion? Throw away?

Farms make on average 0.5% income. So a 4m farm makes 20k a year (let's not even get into minimum wage here)

IHT at 20% on even 1m (but it could be 3m if the farmer doesn't have a spouse) comes in at 200k. Spread that over 10 years and it's 20k per year. Which is the total income the farm makes, leaving precisely £0.00 for food and shit.

In that case why the hell is the value of the land so high. In no other business would somebody invest £4m for a £20k return. As I'm sure you realise, there are many more factors in play. Including subsidies for various schemes, tax avoidance, and land prices increasing way beyond inflation. This scheme may help stop part of that by stopping those that buy to avoid IHT like Clarkson and Dyson.

Support them because of the food supply and how badly it is fucked already.

This. No one who could cash in their assets for £4m would work for £20k PA. Load of crap

Here's a question for all those hating on the farmers and their good coats.
If their life is so fecking idyllic and they are so well off - why are the suicude stats for farmers so very bad!

To keep the countryside and food production intact.

Because I don’t resent people having things I don’t have.