@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!
