Londonlisa2001
Tommy Hutchison
- Joined
- Jul 19, 2020
- Messages
- 1,150
- Reaction score
- 42
There are two things that are adversely affecting farmers. One is the tax efficiency of land which has forced up land prices, taken huge swathes of land out of farmers’ hands and created an inbalance of agricultural land being farmed as opposed to being held for tax avoidance purposes. The second is brexit and the subsequent trade deals signed with, in particular Australia and NZ by the Tory party.I’m very much on the side of the farmers here. There is a real danger of land being concreted over and generations of farming destroyed. It is a different business model, everything is wrapped up with the farm.
They have large “assets” but by definition they don’t want to sell them. This will make that far more of a prospect.
It’s got the feel of a lot of unintended consequences. It’s easy for class warriors to go on about rich land owners without any understanding.
I do think something can be done at the margins and there is the problem of IHT avoidance. You could eg only be subject to IHT on the sale of the land.
Those that keep an open mind should think about this a bit more. I appreciate some will simply fall into line that they’re all rich and therefore should pay.
Farmers are effectively campaigning against their own interests. Not for the first time. There can be few sights as depressing as farmers who’ve been killed by brexit cheering for Farage this week.
As an aside, ‘generations of farmers’ did pay IHT, or Capital Transfer Tax as it was. And then they paid tax on lifetime transfers as well as death transfers. The APR was introduced to benefit wealthy landowners not farmers.