2024 UK politics - now with Labour in charge
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The one compliment I would pay the Conservative election campaign is that they really helped box labour in on sensible tax rises. It's kind of funny that this has probably contributed to the farming inheritance tax issue.
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A lot of you seem to not know about Business Property Relief that applied to other businesses to stop them being broken up. If you had a 'trading company' then you would have passed that business on free of IHT.
Now you are also restricted to the £1 million allowance and any excess value will be taxed at 20%. However, it is quite hard to place a value on many private trading companies, eg what is the value of an architectural business, or a butchers? Much easier if you have 400 acres.
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See post above from DB. There seems to be some confusion about the treatment of farms compared other businesses from an IHT perspective.
"I spent most of my money on birds, booze and fast cars: the rest of it I just squandered." [George Best]0 -
Just pointing out a spot of leftie hypocrisy.
"I spent most of my money on birds, booze and fast cars: the rest of it I just squandered." [George Best]0 -
Enjoyed this on the late John Prescott
“New York has the haircuts, London has the trousers, but Belfast has the reason!1 -
I think business valuation is a fairly well trodden path.
Moving on...
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...to the point that both farms and other businesses had exemptions from iHT?
"I spent most of my money on birds, booze and fast cars: the rest of it I just squandered." [George Best]0 -
The idea that small businesses can't be valued is not really true, is it. And if a business is worth any serious amount of money even the most basic advice will tell you that you need to plan for succession, not just assume that the business will pass to your descendants on death. Can we stop being silly about this?
1985 Mercian King of Mercia - work in progress (Hah! Who am I kidding?)
Pinnacle Monzonite
Part of the anti-growth coalition0 -
I didn't say that valuations were difficult. Although from a professional perspective they are subjective.
Not sure who you think is being silly.
"I spent most of my money on birds, booze and fast cars: the rest of it I just squandered." [George Best]0 -
The people suggesting that farmers are somehow unable to plan for the transfer of assets to descendants like everyone else.
1985 Mercian King of Mercia - work in progress (Hah! Who am I kidding?)
Pinnacle Monzonite
Part of the anti-growth coalition0 -
Well it's great that people can plan the day when they die. I guess it must be something new.
"I spent most of my money on birds, booze and fast cars: the rest of it I just squandered." [George Best]0 -
Interesting intervention on the Farm IHT
“New York has the haircuts, London has the trousers, but Belfast has the reason!0 -
We are trying to find *differences* between farmers and everyone else to justify differences between the way we treat farmers and everyone else, aren't we?
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I'm making the point point that it's an arbitrary tax overall. Being unlucky enough to die should not be a factor.
In any event, I've already made my position clear that it shouldn't apply to firms or other businesses. See reasons given above around benefits of business continuity.
"I spent most of my money on birds, booze and fast cars: the rest of it I just squandered." [George Best]0 -
Gosh. Had forgotten that. Though, to be fair to her, it was probably because of her reactionary ideology rather than being afraid of upsetting portions of the electorate (which I think is Starmer's weakness).
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Well, put it another way: we all know that we're not going to live forever. And not knowing how long you've got is precisely why you should make plans.
1985 Mercian King of Mercia - work in progress (Hah! Who am I kidding?)
Pinnacle Monzonite
Part of the anti-growth coalition0 -
At what point should you make those plans?
The nature of farming businesses is diferrent to many other businesses.
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While I have a lot of sympathy for farmers (not least as I have known lots, and frequently it's the shittest job imaginable), I've always thought that the model of the parent(s) staying in charge till they drop dead is silly... you get people in their 60s still not in charge of the farm, and that's not good for new ideas in farming - they should be taking over in their 40s if not earlier, while they've got the drive to try stuff out.
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If you want to hand it over to your children, then as soon as you know they are interested and capable. If you want to put a number on it, early 50s at the latest.
1985 Mercian King of Mercia - work in progress (Hah! Who am I kidding?)
Pinnacle Monzonite
Part of the anti-growth coalition0 -
Maybe worth mentioning that both the threshold and the rate of tax for agricultural iHT is different from those applicable to individuals. So even Labour realise its a different situation 🙂
"I spent most of my money on birds, booze and fast cars: the rest of it I just squandered." [George Best]0 -
Having read this, I can't quite see why they don't just pass it on earlier, and (if it soothes nerves) take out insurance against having to pay IHT in case of a very early death. I don't think that sentimentality counts as a strong counter-argument:
“If we gave up the farm, under the rules, I would have to then pay rent on my home, which I built and paid for,” Peter said.
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whilst i have sympathy with those who are genuine family farmers, living on the land they farm, the problem is that farming has been on taxpayer funded life support for decades
huge subsidies, tax breaks and other incentives lead inevitably to non-farming exploitation and unintended consequences
let the market prevail, if the uk wants farmers to be able to make a living, prices need to reflect production costs, use tariffs to prevent low priced imports, or if government wants to carry on burning taxpayers money, subsidise crop/meat prices
farm profits up, farmers happy, taxes down, equal treatment by hmrc, no more exploitation for iht avoidance and subsidy harvesting by dacre etc.
my bike - faster than god's and twice as shiny0 -
All that might well be true, but as I've mentioned before, you can't really deal with that without considering how the whole of what we think of as Britain is pretty much entirely shaped by farming, whether that's Dartmoor 'wilderness' (in reality, heavily managed to keep it looking that way) and other national parks, the areas of the most intensive agriculture (e.g. East Anglia) and everything in between. While people might say that they think the price of food should reflect all sorts of things, and they care about the countryside, in reality, when they go to buy food, the vast majority will simply buy on price, whilst complaining that the fields a few miles out of town have got solar panels, or a new housing estate. Tell them that you're going to put up trade barriers and push up prices isn't going to win an election.
Even in the land of the free market and vast prairies given over to intensive agriculture, the US, current subsidy to farming is $30bn a year. UK subsidies are £2.4bn. Seems like quite good value in comparison, given the varied nature of the UK countryside.
Look at it another way: the UK subsidy to the house rental market is about £16bn (in the form of housing benefit). Is there an argument for removing that and letting the market readjust? After all, we wouldn't need any import controls.
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yes
stop distorting markets, i'm profoundly fed up with subsidising the lazy, the stupid and the venal, fuck 'em
my bike - faster than god's and twice as shiny0 -
This is laughable, if we're going to call a general election each time a government breaks a 'promise' (with the caveat that it's obviously being pushed by those who would undermine actual elections, which isn't a laughing matter). At least they get another proper vote on it in less than five years, which is unlike the B vote (and, FWIW, the petition against which got 6 million or so signatures, not least on the basis of the 'broken promise' of SM & CU).
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Has anything actually come out of any petition?
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Looks like a symptom of 'buyers remorse' amongst those who voted them in and are now regretting it.
"I spent most of my money on birds, booze and fast cars: the rest of it I just squandered." [George Best]0 -
Seems more likely to be mostly made up of the 66% of voters who didn't vote for him...
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Embarrassing that anyone is taking this remotely seriously.
The security on the website is not that difficult to bypass with a throwaway email address and a looked up postcode.
Which is why they are utterly meaningless.
1985 Mercian King of Mercia - work in progress (Hah! Who am I kidding?)
Pinnacle Monzonite
Part of the anti-growth coalition0 -
I think Labour will eventually consent to another general election.
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