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.

You mean those same bankers and financiers who now are investing in farms, or the financial advisers recommending people with money to buy farms as an IHT dodge?

I support the farmers. I work in a rural school and see how hard they work for shamefully low reward. Most of the children are on free school meals.

Oh give over , plenty of us do hard jobs- and pay inheritance tax.🙄

It is this level of ignorance that is so shocking. Please do your research first.

So do I. Its absolutely terrifying with this net zero

I think being fed is more important.

It feels like a war on our traditions and heritage

Most of the farmers kids I know are in private schools .

How can they? The barrier to entry is you need to Inherit a multimillion pound farm 😭

isn’t it obvious why farming stays in families?

No because earnings or salary (which equals profit in a small business) is a number whereas return on capital is a percentage. The amount of earnings will only partly depend on the amount of capital. Capital is affected by things do not directly affect turnover such as where the farm is located (land and building value varies). Earnings (=profit) is affected by efficiently the farm is run, any disasters they have to deal with such as harvest failure or bovine TB etc.

Sorry to hyperbole, but I don't understand the argument farmers are born to the job and grow up to be farmers and nothing else. Don't farmer kids have choice in their lives. Do all of them passionately want to become farmers. I bet there are some sad stories out there... One wouldn't think of any other business owner's kid, say I don't know, window producer, having to keep the family biz so therefore shouldn't pay inheritance tax.

Not if they put it in a Trust.

Most voted for Brexit which has been bad for agriculture. Now they have also lost their subsidies (Tory policy resulting from Agricultural Act following the leaving of the EU). They wanted out as there was too much red tape, paperwork and inspections on things like soil health and nutrients from slurry running into rivers.

But you have a job and you pay IHT. That is the difference. Say you have a job and a house and a mortgage. Your parents die, you pay the IHT and then once everything is settled you may have some money to pay off mortgage, gift to children go on holiday.

farmer dies. Inheritance tax has to be paid. In order to do that, you have to sell part of the farm and then it can no longer be sustainable. Good bye farm.

the two scenarios are not linked. When your parents die you will not pay IHT on the earnings from your job. When your job and what is being taxed is so tied up together - the scenario is very different.

You can go to the bank for a business loan to become a tennant farmer. Any plans to do that?

It’s ok the poster who alleged the £20k salary posted their research which proved it was wrong. Which made it really easy for me to do my research 🤪

Absolutely not the case. I work with farmers and there are plenty of first generation farmers around. Often they start small alongside a day job. There are also a lot of tenant farmers.

In fact lots of young people from farming families don't want to do it as it's such hard work! The average age of a farmer is 60. 40% are past retirement age.

I support them because this reeks of the VAT on school fees envy tax. A section of society has been stereotyped as being wealthy and they're being punished for it. Labour haven't done their sums on this just as they haven't on the school fees.

I didn’t say they were the only people that have hard jobs. Theirs is certainly one of the more critical ones though.

Our survival depends on a few things. Food, clean water, housing, heat. These go, and we are all fucked!

There are other areas that should be targeted for tax, ahead of this. Farming will eventually be extinct in this country or run by global conglomerates who don’t give a shit about feeding us or maintaining our countryside and ecosystems.

Think of the bigger picture.

Ok so those inheriting a multi million kind farm can apply to do the same when paying their inheritance tax.

🙄

Exactly. Parents die and you also lose your livelihood. That doesn't apply in many other situations

YABU
And this:

Far from "protecting the family farm", as claimed by Tom Bradshaw, president of the National Farmers Union (Opinion, FT.com, November 5), the inheritance tax loophole on farmland, introduced in 1984, simply pushed up the price of land without improving returns to active farmers.
This is because, like most agricultural subsidies, the value of the relief was capitalised into land values. As tax planners cottoned on to its role as a licence to avoid IT, they advised their super-rich clients to buy land and take advantage of it. In the 20 years to 2012, the price of farmland increased fourfold.
This turned landowning farmers into millionaires but — especially since land represents a cost of production - did no good to the incomes of food producers. It created impoverished millionaires who claimed a need for more support. At the same time, because more expensive land had to be squeezed even harder for the last drop of revenue, the environmental damage caused by intensive agriculture was made worse. Taking at least some of this tax loophole away will do no harm to family farmers but will help both public revenues and the environment.
Just a shame the relief was not wholly abolished.
Paul Cheshire
Emeritus Professor of Economic Geography London School of Economics, London N7, UK

Absolutely this. I support.

Do people not realise there is no liquidity in these farms? The farmer might have a '£12m farm' but less than 2k a month income. And never a single thought to liquidate any of the asset ever, only to pass on the farm and the profession when they die to the kid who probably grafted alongside them from the age of 5. Most of the farmers I know only survive at all becaue of subsidies and yes, many of them theoretically have £2m+ farms. In theory. This is not a wealth situation. It will dismantle the whole industry which has been built on the sole basis of brainwashing the children of farmers into farming for their future too....often because they have been raised on the idea of 'keeping the farm in the family'.

Farming isnt a money game. The government and corporations just want to extract the assets out of it for themselves.

THIS. 🎯