2024 UK politics - now with Labour in charge

It can be plannable if you're not unlucky enough to die before you expect to. But the point here is more around not forcing the break up of businesses.

Is that not what life insurance is for? Also given farming is hard physical and relatively dangerous work, planning for succession is just something any responsible person needs to do.

From some very crude sums, it doesn't look as though it forces the break up of a business any more than any other capital intensive business with a tax bill. As has been argued already, the use of farmland for tax planning/investment seems to have an inflationary effect on land values, dragging smaller farms above the threshold.

Isn't the flawed tax policy the one that encouraged a load of millionaires to buy farming land and push up prices so that they can avoid paying inheritance tax?

Obviously you can't, you're suggesting removing IHT for farmers without a clue how you are going to tell a farmer from anybody who just happens to own a farm. That's a flawed policy.

Hence my suggestion above to modify the policy to combat IHT avoidance while not hitting regular farms.

It's not soak the farmers. It's put the farmers on the same basis as everyone else, so that their main resource isn't co-opted as a tax free savings facility. I guess the other option is to abolish IHT altogether, but then what instead? It probably needs an implementation period like any significant change.

IIRC* back in the 90s/early 00s a hotel chain owner died leaving an entire estate of £85. I'm sure Stevo will approve. Farmers could learn a lot from that.

*I tried a Google search to no avail.

It's your policy, please explain how you would make it work. A sound policy won't leave loopholes, how will you close the gaping loophole in your policy?

At the end of the day the tax relief on land has created a problem and Labour are being responsible in removing it. There will be losers as a result, but the cause is allowing the relief in the first place, not the removal of it now. For balance from one of your favourite papers from last year:

For those that don't want to negotiate the paywall a big takeaway from the article is this paragraph:

"The Telegraph and 50 Conservative MPs are campaigning to abolish inheritance tax."

It looks like Labour might again have politically naive not to more carefully laid the groundwork with messaging about how they "were addressing the problem in the farming industry of artificially inflated land values" with the change in IHT. It's no surprise that the RW press has gone after this as a 'war on farmers', and Labour should have done their best to spike that charge, and to make sure that the point at which IHT kicks in was set at a realistic headline level.

There was no messaging about inflated land values.

The assumption being made is that if agricultural land is less attractive as an investment with IHT benefits post the changes, demand will fall and therefore values will fall too.

People seem to be forgetting the reason Business Property Relief was introduced in 1976 (by a Labour Government btw), with Agricultural Relief following 8 years later.

I have stated a few times how you could hit the landlord land owners without hitting the working farm landowners.

Given there was (per DB) no messaging around addressing this issue, do you think the government actually intended it, or is there simply a happy "after-the-fact" benefit that can be retrospectively used to justify a simple tax increase?

Seems odd that a government would fail to mention such a benefit (i.e. cheaper land prices for "real" farmers => lower food prices) if achieving such a benefit was its intention.

As I already said above. Set a high threshold so its only the 'big players' who you disapprove of who might get caught, then have a sensible set of tests for those cases over the limit, such as:

• Is the taxpayers main business farming?
• Are they actively involved in the running and management of the farm/land purchased?
• Is the land being used for agricultural activity of just left alone or fallow/if so what proportion is being used?
• Have they purchased other assets involved in the running of the farm (vehicles, agricultural supplies etc)
• How long has the farm/land been owned (may predate the time when the rules applied)?

This is not fundamentally different from the anti avoidance tests in other areas where it is necessary to determine the main purpose of a transaction or series of transactions. Or the verious tests to determine whether a taxpayer is trading for tax purposes. Typically the taxpayer needs to demonstrate these things so not that difficult from a HMRC perspective - they mainly need to make the judgment.

Now let's hear if you have a better idea. Or for that matter, any idea at all.

Some people think it should be. Lefties, surprisingly...

Seems to be correct. £5bn reduction in the gain from compensation paid to public sector employers. Also, a lot lost due to behavioural changes, so actually the gain the for the government is a lot less than stated at around £11bn-£14bn.

The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away.