To be concerned about the farms

[Rubytuesday77]

i find it quite concerning that many fsrms will cease to exist with the government inheritance taxes etc. I just don’t understand why the government seems hell bent on taxing them out of existence. Food prices will inevitably shoot up surely.

Hi, OP. We'll move your thread to the politics board now as we can see that you haven't had any responses yet in AIBU.

I think people generally have very little understanding as to how family farm businesses work. The value of the land can be enormous, investments required to maintain and progress are also huge. Tractors cost hundreds of thousands ££. Mostly profits are reinvested to keep modern. This means that wages/profits are not in relation to the cost/value of land. There is no way most family farms could afford this tax without selling land. The countryside will be changed forever and become much more of an industrial landscape.
farmers are incandescent about this. Those of you who expect supermarket shelves to be well stocked in the future are naive and those of you worried about food prices are in for a big shock. Farmers have the power to cause a lot of chaos and panic as we saw from the pandemic; the food chain is very unstable and can change quickly. They also have the power to disrupt the sewage system within the UK which is also being talked about.… Much of the waste is taken away by farmers after it has been processed in sewage plants. Again, people are very much unaware of this… They just flush their toilets and don’t give it another thought.

I suspect something will have to be done when the tax is actually brought in, to try and target the Dysons and Clarksons of the world who are using land specifically to avoid IHT but to exempt the genuine small family farms who need inheritance to keep farming.

I just don’t understand why the government seems hell bent on taxing them out of existence. Food prices will inevitably shoot up surely.

The Labour Party hates farmers as they think they don’t vote Labour (any that did certainly won’t now), and are pro hunting and shooting.
Punishing farmers is worth any consequences such as rising food prices.
What I don’t understand is who will take these farms on. Will the farmhouses be sold separately and the land taken on by large corporations?
i guess property developers will buy up large chunks as the government are keen that lots of houses are built - and this will have the added benefit of annoying posho nimbies.

The average age of a UK farmer is 59, in many industries it's normal to retire around 60 but in farming you are average age. In 20 years time half of all current farmers will either be dead or unable to work so the government really need to be giving young people reasons to stay in the industry but instead they are doing the opposite.

The solution is quite simple, move from being a sole trader where the farm etc. is classed as someone's personal property and hence liable to IT on death, to a limited liability company which owns the farm etc. Hence the only IT will be limited to their stuff upon death, excluding the farm.
There are plenty of other family firms who manage like this, and there's nothing to stop farmers following suite.

I am very concerned about this too. @ifailed I don't believe it is as simple as this. For a start surely there is capital gains tax on transfer from personal property to a ltd company, I imagine stamp duty etc too.

It just seems such a huge mistake, to tax farmers on land passed down to family farmers. It's supremely short sited.

I really hope there is some immediate form of tax relief for family farms. Maybe if they are contributing to food production for the uk they would be exempt.

As previous posters have pointed out it's asset rich but very poor yields with the majority of profit needing to be ploughed back into maintaining a farm and machinery.

Since Brexit the subsidies have gone to help affordable food for our tables.

Now more than ever need sustainable food production.

This is a crazy change to taxes. It's cutting off the hand that feeds us.

Prices will climb, again affecting the poorest. Family farming will die out in a few decades unless there is huge support from the government. Why compromise our food production in the first place?

I'm so cross.

@Cheerfulcharlie,
I'm sure it's not simple, however when the sole-trader transfers the farm assets to the LLC they will receive payment or shares in the new company. These can be gifted to family members and avoid IT if the farmer lives 7 years.
The main point is, once this is set-up, it will last forever and the farm will be secure from future IT.

This. I don’t get what all the fuss is about.

I'm also concerned about this. There must be more elegant way to prevent the extremely wealthy from exploiting the "farm status" as an inheritance tax loophole (which I'm led to believe itself is also harmful to farmers as it has driven up land prices).

Agriculture seems mismanaged in many ways. For example, it seems that measures taken to mitigate the environmental impact of farming are unpopular with farmers - but surely these schemes should be incentivised so that farmers are delighted to take advantage of them? Do we just need to subsidise farming much more in this country, particularly following the loss of EU subsidies? How can younger people be drawn into farming? Could some farming land be taken into public ownership so that people without inherited land can afford to be farmers?

As a nation we surely need to protect farming?

Can farms be gifted free of IHT more than 7 years before death like other non-farm assets? If it’s all staying in the family, could small farmers just plan along these lines (like anyone leaving an estate above the various IHT thresholds)?

A cynical person might think this policy is designed to force land sales for Labour's grand house building plans. Personally I think food security should be a higher priority.

What I don’t understand is why farmers who retire don’t just gift their farms to their children who work the farm when they retire. When 7 years have passed they won’t have to pay IHT.

There might be capital gains tax implications there.

Know nothing about the farming sector so can’t comment on how I think it will fare.
Tbh, though, I rather lost sympathy when it overwhelmingly voted for Brexit in 2016. Classic case of Turkeys voting for Christmas. European subsidies and grants. were an enormous financial boost.

I am concerned about this policy.

But in a wider sense, it is typical of this government - hurt a minority, so that most people don't care - or even are so naive as to think that it's justified or the right thing to do.

Same

Because often they don’t have the funds or the house to provide for their retirement. If you benefit in any way from the gift it’s not IHT free. There are ways and means round this eg pay a rent on the house but the reality is there needs to be cash to be able to do it.

im a farmer and met with our accountant yesterday to discuss what changes will
be required. Fairly significant things are going to be done and fast and one of my parents will have to live 7 years!! But there are things that can be done.

the losers in this are the small family farms. The only winners are accountants, land agents and people like Clarkson who will continue to buy farmland as it’s 20% IHT not 40%.

controversially I don’t think the changes are necessarily a bad thing. The awful stories you hear of a 60 year old working for a pittance because he will inherit one day should belong in Victorian times. How is ok to not pay your son the minimum wage at least on the promise that he’ll own something in the future. There’s a big problem with old farmers not handing over the reins. I do think this will help.

Only on the sale of the land I believe.

If they want all farms to be held in a limited liability company they should offer a one off window to all farmers to do just that within a given time frame. Without tax implications. I do understand that farm accounts should be properly kept and valid deductions made long term.

It is like the onslaught on small time landlords. They aren’t all bad, many are much better than bigger landlords. It’s leading to rents rising, not the opposite, at the worst time.

Rather than incentivising farmers to have to sell off lands to eg Chinese companies. And food security should be like pandemic planning. They should have to publish a full
impact assessment on food security first.

The government is unlikely to focus house building on rural land. There’d be no services, schools, shops etc.
The budget sought to share the burden of higher taxes in a more progressive way. No government will please all the people all the time but generally a budget which taxes capital gains, inheritance, non-doms, etc. and raises the minimum wage and eventually tax thresholds, is a progressive approach.

I'm not expert but my understanding was that tax exemption was there because paying large taxes after death was making farms unviable. But this has been exploited by hedge funds and entrepreneurs who are not really friends of farming.
Going forward large farms will have to change their legal business models to work more tax efficiently. This shouldn't be the death of farming but it will force change. It will probably be the younger generation of farmers that will see this through. But family farm businesses are very traditional and there's a lot of attachment and emotional commitment that's different to most businesses, so for many this will be a difficult mind set to change to. I hope the Government step up and help with that.

The problem is, most in government have no experience of business. They think business can just be pushed further on further to the brink without any repercussions. Off topic, but I know of somebody with a call centre who is relocating the business to South Africa. That’s 1500 low paid jobs for this country about to go. Rachel seems pretty clueless to how business owners feel and what motivates them

@WhitegreeNcandle I meant on the gift of the farm assets. But I'm not an expert.