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Good discussion lads
Lots of good/interesting points made from different angles.
STW at its best
The people it will really hurt are the small to mid size family farms where the land is passed down generation to generation and to whom the value of the land is really irrelevant anyway.
How many small-medium size farms are worth over £1.3m though (assuming there's a farmhouse on it, rising to £3m allowance inc. spousal etc.)? The BBC Verify article says only 35% of UK farms are valued at over £1m, I'd assume then they're mostly medium-large farms (and likely just large farms once you get to £3m).
There's probably only a handful of genuine family-owned-passed-down-through-the-generations farms that will really struggle with the IHT change (e.g. worth £1.5m with no spousal allowance to factor in but so cash poor that paying back £35k over 10 years would be impossible). Perhaps there is a way to help those family farms without providing a loop hole the wealthy landowners can't exploit (not sure what that would be though) but I hope the government don't just cave completely and not implement the main IHT changes.
It seems like there are 2 problems. First, the value of the land is too high. I don't know much about this, but some of the explanations above make sense. If someone can make significant money and/or savings by buying the land, whether or not it is worked then it pushes the cost up for everyone.
The other issue is that it seems to be pretty hard to make money from farming - as opposed to owning farmland. Supermarket practices must be a huge component in this. This source suggests the value of supermarkets in the UK economy is 241 billion, while this link says UK farming contributed 13.7 billion to the economy last year. Perhaps farmers (and we, the customers) could push harder for reform there? I'm not sure if these figures are directly comparable, but it shows where the balance of power lies.
UK farming isn’t green? Compared to what? Transporting your milk from across the continent? Flying your beef in from Brazil or lamb from New Zealand?
Loads of studies show that sea transport of food is usually a fairly minor component in the environmental impact of food production. Rearing sheep in New Zealand is much less energy intensive than in the UK so it is more "environmentally friendly" to import the meat. Beef from slash and burn rainforests in Brazil less so, I'd imagine.
Milk is interesting - UK has the potential to produce relatively low-impact milk, but there are limitations on how much we can use. Exporting seems to be pretty big business - so we should not be critical of "food miles" and insist on insular self-reliance. The best way to get the most value out of food production is to capitalise on what we can do best and rely on trading partners to do the same.
I know there's a section of society always very excited about the prospect of re-living WW2 and needing to be self-sufficient, but it's not going to happen.
Since a lot of the anti- IHT change voices in the media are concerned about the loss of food production capacity, I thought I'd look at the degree to which we are self-sufficient and how it has changed over time.
It rises steadily post-war (when we were nowhere near self sufficiency) until the mid 80s, when it starts to decline, right about the time the IHT exemption was first introduced incidentally.
Again, in relation to the far right...
Outdoorsy clothes have been doing well.
Also, unfortunate banner under Tice...
The other issue is that it seems to be pretty hard to make money from farming – as opposed to owning farmland.
This is the bit I don't understand?
How do you make money from farmland without farming it?
The vast majority will never get planning permission for any kind of development, although are the returns so great that if you buy up 1000 acres and only get housing planning for 10 acres, does it pay off?
It rises steadily post-war (when we were nowhere near self sufficiency) until the mid 80s, when it starts to decline, right about the time the IHT exemption was first introduced incidentally.
And incidentally when a greater choice of food across the seasons really started to be available (to ordinary folk).
FuzzyWuzzy
How many small-medium size farms are worth over £1.3m though (assuming there’s a farmhouse on it, rising to £3m allowance inc. spousal etc.)? The BBC Verify article says only 35% of UK farms are valued at over £1m, I’d assume then they’re mostly medium-large farms (and likely just large farms once you get to £3m).
I'm dubious of that figure from the BBC. In a lot of the country, the farmhouse alone is probably £500K, and I bet a lot are closer to a million. Then there is equipment (tractor alone can be £100K plus drills sprayers etc), working buildings, livestock + the land itself at £10K an acre (average farm size 217 acres). You can be over 1.3 million very easily.
For reference, Harry Metcalf breaks down the figures on his own farm (500 acres) in a recent video on his farm channel and reckons it'd be worth close to 8 million. He says you'd need around that size of farm to bring in around £60K a year.
It’s really tugging on my heartstrings listening to a multimillionaire TV presenter imploring the government to allow landowners sat on millions of pounds worth of assets to pass them on to their children without paying any tax.
Apparently Andrew Lloyd Webber was there too as he was also caught up in dodging tax by buying loads of land
Will nobody think of the multimillionaire musical writers?
How many small-medium size farms are worth over £1.3m though (assuming there’s a farmhouse on it, rising to £3m allowance inc. spousal etc.)? The BBC Verify article says only 35% of UK farms are valued at over £1m, I’d assume then they’re mostly medium-large farms (and likely just large farms once you get to £3m).
The HMRC source for the article says 27% of inherited farms in 2021-2 were above £1m, but the vast majority would still be below the threshold once the various other reliefs are applied. Only 117 out of 1730 (7%) were above £2.5m. There are nearly 100,000 farms in the UK all together.
On the profits of farming - it looks like a huge proportion are making less than 25k Euros a year.
(this is just England)
The vast majority will never get planning permission for any kind of development, although are the returns so great that if you buy up 1000 acres and only get housing planning for 10 acres, does it pay off?
1acre plot near us sold for £900k a fair few years ago, fag packet maths says yes to your question. Looked on the private eye map of land held by offshore companies - most of the "farm land" near us is offshore owned & being infilled with housing developments slowly but surely.
How do you make money from farmland without farming it?
Buy land. Rent land to someone else who makes a pittance on it while taking all the risk.
For reference, Harry Metcalf breaks down the figures on his own farm (500 acres) in a recent video on his farm channel and reckons it’d be worth close to 8 million. He says you’d need around that size of farm to bring in around £60K a year.
I call BS.
What does he mean by "bring in around £60k a year"?
is that net profit after tax?
If so, how much of a wage has he and his family took?
He could have 5 family members working for the farm and they are all taking a 100k a year wage each?
The average farm size in the UK is about 200 acres. How do they survive if you need 500 to "bring in £60k".
Well, if I was in any doubt as to what to think on this issue (I wasn't, but hey) then the decent person's rule of thumb has just been applied. See where the likes of Farage stand on the issue and take the other side. It has never failed.
This is a smokescreen. Actual farmers are being used by non-farming tax dodgers and vested interests. I suspect, when this law is enacted we will hear very little from real farmers going forwards, but they'll forever be tainted with the association.
The proposed measures are not unfair.
Pity it had to come to this for one local farmer
https://www.****/news/article-14057491/farmer-inheritance-tax-raid-killed-john-charlesworth.html
This is a bit like the poll tax riots but much posher.
Living in rural Cornwall my Facebook feed today is full of the wear wellies to support our farmers etc posts... I was starting to feel like I was missing something obvious as to why the farmers should be an exception.
It's been great reading this thread & my initial thoughts remain. That farmers should be subject to IHT on amounts that are greater than the vast majority of us will ever see in our lifetime.
I call BS.
What does he mean by “bring in around £60k a year”?
is that net profit after tax?
If so, how much of a wage has he and his family took?
He could have 5 family members working for the farm and they are all taking a 100k a year wage each?
The average farm size in the UK is about 200 acres. How do they survive if you need 500 to “bring in £60k”.
100%. At best it is ignorance, but I suspect it is misrepresentation. I'd be interested to know what the true average margins at each major point down a farm's P&L are.
If I had an £8 million pound asset but wanted to get more than £60K per year and better still not have to work at all I would just sell it.
Let's see - 8,000,000 / 60,000 = 133 I think getting 60k a year for 133 years for doing nothing should do me. I could even go mad and get £120,000 a year for 60 years as I doubt I will be living until 116.
@Tracey - That's a tragedy for their family. However, I think it's more to do with severe mental health issues than the budget.
His farm was a 70 acre farm in the Pennines, it would never of triggered any IHT. A call to his accountant would of cleared that up very quickly.
It's the Daily Mail stirring trouble again.
Pity it had to come to this for one local farmer
Utterly depressing. Especially as the actual details of the tax changes (rather than those blown up in the press by the likes of the DailyMail) would have meant his family need not have been effected at all by them.
Having seen what my next door neighbour went through caring for his wife with dementia... far more help is needed by people going through that.
Clarkson's run in with Victoria Derbyshire:
https://twitter.com/PolitlcsUK/status/1858853384033288622
Clarkson’s run in with Victoria Derbyshire:
"96% of farmers will be effected"
He could make his case without bullshit... or perhaps he couldn't.
If it really was the case that, in effect, all farmers would be effected, I'd have been down there protesting as well.
Wealthy farmers won't be able to directly pass on all their wealth held in land tax free anymore. It's not an attack on farmers. It's an adjustment to our quite minimal wealth taxes so that large estates are no longer exempt (but will still benefit from a large tax break, and methods of tax planning/minimisation).
I don’t understand why they expect to be treated differently from any other family business that is passed on.
I got bored reading the thread so apologies if this has been brought up, but it should be fairly obvious why farming is a special sort of business that needs to be handled differently.
Clarkson’s run in with Victoria Derbyshire:
All he's doing is proving he's a bell-end and a poor Farage impersonator
farming is a special sort of business that needs to be handled differently
They are handled differently. Still. Very advantageously. That advantage is being reduced for the very wealthiest of farm owners. That is all.
And outside inheritance tax, smaller farm owners and tenant farmers (most farmers I've known have been both... owning some land and renting some more) need more help... help to access markets, help with investment in machinery, help with finding workers, help with the unbalanced nature of food purchasing relationships, help with controlling disease and pests, help with creating added value though on site processing, help with restoring and protecting habitats... but, at the end of the day, the richest of land owners and their press owning peers shouldn't be making the normal farmer feel put upon, or targeted, or neglected, or under appreciated as a smoke screen for protecting their own vast wealths from a reasonable about of taxation.
I got bored reading the thread so apologies if this has been brought up, but it should be fairly obvious why farming is a special sort of business that needs to be handled differently.
Not really. That's the same silly argument they used changing pension limits for NHS Doctors - who are often in the top 1% of earners in the country - then saying that the new limits are there for everyone. How can you drop £50k per annum in your pension pot if you earn £30k and have kids to feed?
Further to my post about – commented on a local FB thread asking why farmers shouldn’t pay IHT has resulted in a threat. So that’s fun.
Predictable, given the audience.
Pity it had to come to this for one local farmer
A tragedy yes, but not the fault of the tax change or the chancellor. At this point in time the best thing I could do for my family financially would be to 'accidentally' fall under the wheels of a truck while out on my bike. They would get the best part of 500k in life insurance, the mortgage would be paid off and my kids paid through university. Would I do it? No because I know they would rather not have the money and still have me around and I suspect that farmer's family think exactly the same. That farmer just made a very poor misguided decision (and obviously there may be other factors we don't know about) and now his family are suffering because of that decision, not because the chancellor changed the law.
.
Well, if I was in any doubt as to what to think on this issue (I wasn’t, but hey) then the decent person’s rule of thumb has just been applied. See where the likes of Farage stand on the issue and take the other side. It has never failed.
Yep - very much this.
Interesting he's graced us with his presence now that his orange messiah has been elected. Suspect he didn't want to be upstaged by the likes of Tice and Clarkson. Or maybe he just wants to stand up for farmers just like he did for the Fishermen when he was a MEP...
Clarkson and Farage have one thing in common, they only care about themselves and the grift.
This is the bit I don’t understand?
How do you make money from farmland without farming it?
Have you read the thread? Same as any appreciating assets.... Buy it, hold it, sell it later on at a higher price. See also BTC, Rolls Royce shares etc
Or even betterer, give it to your kids to avoid IHT, so they can sell it for ur even more.
I’m dubious of that figure from the BBC. In a lot of the country, the farmhouse alone is probably £500K, and I bet a lot are closer to a million. Then there is equipment (tractor alone can be £100K plus drills sprayers etc), working buildings, livestock + the land itself at £10K an acre (average farm size 217 acres). You can be over 1.3 million very easily.
That's a fair point, I've been assuming the figures are for selling the farm as a going concern inc. livestock and equipment, if that's not the case and it's just for the land and buildings on it that does change things (presumably there's a trusted reference that confirms which it is?).
The various other examples being talked about; £4m, £8m and £10m farms - as others have said, I just don't get why you wouldn't sell up and live off the cash/investments instead, rather than working so hard for less than minimum wage. I get that "farming's in the blood" but as a kid I didn't want to be working on computers in an office for 40+ years, we can't always have the careers & lives we want... I also suspect a lot of those people really grafting on farms for pennies are either employed labourers or have leased the farm so wouldn't be impacted by the IHT change anyway.
The other argument about farmer's caring about feeding the nation I don't really believe, that's just BS for newspaper headlines & placards. For sure we need farmers to be producing what they do but given so many have been struggling to do that for years without the IHT change there's other issues that needing addressing to fix that
Farage made it then so I guess there is some far right there, at least he feels safe there not like Clacton where he’s been advised not to visit.
I wondered how many farms there was in his constituency... seems like there might be a few but most excitingly we have found out where Jonathan Gullis was bred...
For reference, Harry Metcalf breaks down the figures on his own farm (500 acres) in a recent video on his farm channel and reckons it’d be worth close to 8 million. He says you’d need around that size of farm to bring in around £60K a year.
Define "bring in".
How much 'salary', accommodation/utilities or vehicles have been taken out before we get down to £60k?
And imagine the lottery question; do you want £60k a year for life or a one-off £8 million - no one will take the £60k.
Actual farmers are being used by non-farming tax dodgers and vested interests. I suspect, when this law is enacted we will hear very little from real farmers going forwards, but they’ll forever be tainted with the association.
I think is the thing here. Perceived entitlement and prejudice on both sides are happily fanning the flames. Another division sown in order to conquer.
One silver lining to possibly focus on with this weird UK culture war we seem to be in is that many of the leading lights are typically gammony old men who will probably be 6ft under in a few years. They represent the past not the future.
One silver lining to possibly focus on with this weird UK culture war we seem to be in is that many of the leading lights are typically gammony old men who will probably be 6ft under in a few years. They represent the past not the future.
I fear they will pass the torch to their inbred offspring.
Next time your down the pub and some apathetic soul starts banging on about there being no point in voting and that all parties are exactly the same, you can point to this example of closing down tax avoidance loopholes to prove that there is a difference even if its quite small. The tories wanted to get rid of IHT all together.
While we all know that "the left" is a pretty self flagellating entity, maybe there is a small opportunity to smile a bit every now and then.
That’s a tragedy for their family. However, I think it’s more to do with severe mental health issues than the budget.
I expect the lies spread by the daily heil etc about how he would be having to pay inheritance tax wouldnt have helped.
So best them and the landlords wanting to dodge tax should stop pushing lies.
Tenant Farmer on TV complaing about the IHT? Unless he has £2 million quids worth of Tractors he's fighting someone else's battle.
it should be fairly obvious why farming is a special sort of business that needs to be handled differently
It is, that’s why they receive massive subsidies for their businesses from the tax payer.
And now they get to pay half the IHT and a much higher starting point than those same tax payers.
Tenant Farmer on TV complaing about the IHT? Unless he has £2 million quids worth of Tractors he’s fighting someone else’s battle.
Radio 4 were doing vox pops with people protesting. It seems that cap-doffing serfdom is alive and well in farm workers, probably earning minimum wage, defending the interests of rich landowners
One silver lining to possibly focus on with this weird UK culture war we seem to be in is that many of the leading lights are typically gammony old men who will probably be 6ft under in a few years. They represent the past not the future.
So you have seen the Victoria Derbyshire and Jeremy Clarkson exchange then?
multi21Free Member
FuzzyWuzzyHow many small-medium size farms are worth over £1.3m though (assuming there’s a farmhouse on it, rising to £3m allowance inc. spousal etc.)? The BBC Verify article says only 35% of UK farms are valued at over £1m, I’d assume then they’re mostly medium-large farms (and likely just large farms once you get to £3m).
I’m dubious of that figure from the BBC. In a lot of the country, the farmhouse alone is probably £500K, and I bet a lot are closer to a million. Then there is equipment (tractor alone can be £100K plus drills sprayers etc), working buildings, livestock + the land itself at £10K an acre (average farm size 217 acres). You can be over 1.3 million very easily.
An old friend bought his farm in a remote part of Devon thirty years ago this year, iirc. He paid something like £100,000 for 60 acres and a run-down grade2 thatched cottage. At the time it was two and a half times what my parents large 4 bed terraced house in a scruffy city was worth. He now has about 100 acres, and the farm is worth over a million. It is still run-down.
He farms sheep and anything else that will make some money - crops for biofuel, etc - doesn't make a huge amount of money from it, but is never short of money. But then he did come from a well off family in the first place. He can afford unusual cars, leases new 4x4s, goes on more foreign holidays than I do. A lot of equipment is shared between the community, so he doesn't need to buy massive amounts of expensive kit, and there is a lot of barter-type trading going on, off the books. (Help me with the spraying and I'll help put up your barn. Do you fancy a lovely joint of venison? Can't tell you where it came from...) If he could, he'd rewild the farm - he's got good intentions but that's often at cross purposes to actual farming.
It's a very different lifestyle to my townie life and I wouldn't want to do it, but that's not because he's living in penury. In fact, none of the friends I met in agricultural college in the 90s are doing any worse for themselves than the desk workers I'm sitting among now.
Tenant Farmer on TV complaing about the IHT?
Baroness Batters was on Radio 4 this morning - she was head of the NFU from 2018-2024, hence the interview. This is her wiki entry:
Batters was born on 28 May 1967.[1] She was brought up on a tenant farm near Salisbury and always wanted to be a farmer. She attended Godolphin School, an independent school in Salisbury.[2] As a teenager she worked with horses for David Elsworth, including riding over 30 winners in races. Her father encouraged her to develop a career instead of becoming involved in farming, so she attended catering college and then ran a catering company.[3] In 1998, when her father retired, she took over the farm's tenancy.[4]
She has been a member of the House of Lords since 2024.
I suspect that 'tenant' may have a few more meanings in the countryside than 'tenant' when you're being evicted from your house because you can't pay the rent. I have a friend who grew up in a tied cottage near Bristol. She was very posh!
That would be the Harry Metcalf with the warehouse full of fancy cars, that also works as a motoring journo?
So you have seen the Victoria Derbyshire and Jeremy Clarkson exchange then?
I did like his opener which can be summarised as "I was lying three years ago but now you can trust me, honest".
Although his ranting about six form politics reminded me of someone else.
Did he show Derbyshire any Monty Python images?
mrhoppy
That would be the Harry Metcalf with the warehouse full of fancy cars, that also works as a motoring journo?
I don't think it's any secret whatsoever that he's minted.
But I suggest you go and look up how long he's been farming, and how he came to be rich and involved in cars if this is supposed to be a gotcha.
Tenant Farmer on TV complaing about the IHT? Unless he has £2 million quids worth of Tractors he’s fighting someone else’s battle.
Strong echoes of the anti-ULEZ hysteria stirred up by R/W media outlets looking for a stick to beat Sadiq Khan with when the vast majority of vehicles people actually drive are exempt anyway.
There's going to be some variety of this tactic every time Labour tries to raise more money to fund the public services the Tories left in ruins, get used to it.
Of course, the most blindingly obvious way to alleviate the current financial squeeze, get the economy moving again and massively help farmers in the process would be to rejoin the European single market, wonder how Big Nige and co feel about that?
I don’t think it’s any secret whatsoever that he’s minted.
But I suggest you go and look up how long he’s been farming, and how he came to be rich and involved in cars if this is supposed to be a gotcha.
Not supposed to be a gotcha, only vaguely aware of him so wasn't sure it was the same fella. But as it is he has multiple other income streams which take his time so I don't imagine he's slaving away to eke out every penny from his farm, if not for the fact he's doing other things instead of working it. So I'm leading to question the validity of his £60k figure, given his other commitments I'm assuming he needs to have staff within his overheads some of which he would t need if he was working dawn til dusk like we're told is needed.
He's also not a typical farmer for the purposes of drawing positions as to where things should be.
A few raised eyebrows in Kingscross today as the hard up Farming communities stepped out of First Class.
Interesting to see Davies, Farron and the LibDem party position on this. Very much lining themselves up as the new Conservatives (but without the foreigner obsession). Their other “pro farming” policies are pretty joined up, but jumping on opposing these meagre wealth tax changes risks putting them on the side of the landowner, rather than everyone else that lives in their rural seats (where the behaviour of the larger land owners towards the wider community is well understood).
And this inheritance tax change fixes that how exactly? In fact i bet this tax change causes family farmers to sell up and actually increase the amount of land that’s in the hands of “big agribusinesses”.
According to local Facebook page, Bill Gates is waiting in the layby ready to pick them all up for a song 😉
According to local Facebook page, Bill Gates is waiting in the layby ready to pick them all up for a song
Blimey, first his plandemic now this!
Dan Hodges, of all people, has just pointed out on Twitter that Kemi Badanoch has now committed to only 2 policies since her leadership election
1. Abolishing inheritance tax for landowners passing on land valued at over 3 million quid
2. Abolishing tax on private school fees
That's the Tory party really addressing the issues that concern most people in this country.
Finger on the pulse there Kemi
So I've got a video from the protest of Clarkson.....turns out it was the interview with Derbyshire! I'd just started filming when he asked how many folk would be impacted by iht. I also got very close to Farage..... he's very short.
Crowdsize was huge though tbf.....saw 10k on BBC, then upped to 13k.....it was way more than that!
Vids of a tractor driving through a bollard, very slowly, but straight at a police officer are circulating on Twitter. Also, rather bizarrely, a couple of folks from JSO turned up!
I'm tired, really don't care for London and am still 90 minutes from home.
Clarkson still thinks he’s on Top Gear using the audience to put shit on Richard Hammond. When he asks his farming disciples how many are affected yeah it’s true most of them are - they just need to do some tax and succession planning. Do these people all honestly think they’re on the hook for loads of money from the get go just cos they wear wellies all day?
At the risk of derailing the thread back to where it started, any sign of the far right getting involved?
do the farmers just have to do is sign the farm over 7 years before death? Just like the rest of us plebs
If you hand over an asset as a gift, you must live seven years, but cannot continue to derive benefit from the asset - otherwise you have not given it away. For the case of a house, for example, your parent gives you a house and lives in it. To avoid IHT they must pay market rent for the property. That could just be a means of them “gifting” you further wealth, but it must be paid.
The problem with farming is the farm has been the pension. So forward planning of income after, say 65, was not a thing. That planning requires pension contributions or future savings to avoid deriving benefit. whilst more young farmers, and farm workers, will be paying into pensions, this has not always been the case. Hence elderly farmers have assets but no future income after gifting the asset.
If you hand over an asset as a gift, you must live seven years, but cannot continue to derive benefit from the asset – otherwise you have not given it away. For the case of a house, for example, your parent gives you a house and lives in it. To avoid IHT they must pay market rent for the property. That could just be a means of them “gifting” you further wealth, but it must be paid.
The accountancy press and HMRC have been stressing this quite a bit in the last week or two.
You didn’t watch it then? It’s full of sniping. And not at all concise.
it was way more than that!
people in large crowds alway seem to overestimate the numbers
the Met have a lot of experience so I think it’s likely that their numbers are there or thereabouts
And not at all concise.
And yet still more concise.
I started out from the perspective of the changes being a bad thing and this thread, being largely a load of shouting down and the usual, had done nothing to convince me otherwise. The video has me now considering the opposite viewpoint.. at they say - it's all in the delivery.
Its sure this isn’t representative of all farmers but the small family owned ones I’ve noticed where I walk doggo are dumping slurry straight into the local river (seen the tankers with hoses discharging)
I find this hard to believe, especially that you've seen multiple. Are you sure they're discharging rather than taking water?