LEAVE the Conservative Party and save your country!

Well I'm glad you only disagree with me on two issues, there's hope for you yet 😉

On farms and IHT, I never mentioned farming subsidies. My argument on IHT was that it was better for both farms and longer term tax revenues to avoid having functioning businesses broken up to pay IHT - that is short sighted. Same goes for businesses generally.

On planning and housing, my main point was that the way to reduce pressure on housing was to address the net immigration and population issue. All the planning relaxation you want won't solve the problem if we are going to let more people in that we can build additional accommodation to house them.

Everyone who comes to this country needs somewhere to live. So more people = more pressure on housing. Currently the rate of immigration exceeds the number of new properties to be built.

The first one. There is not enough housing because of 5 decades of under building and this, plus the tax benefits of owning property are such that the value has appreciated to the point that the average property in London is not affordable to any income decile. Outside of London, in three other regions the average home was only affordable to the top income decile.

That's what they've all been claiming: that the profits they make are nowhere near enough to cover the additional IHT so they would have to sell some of their assets.

This suggests that Farming Business Income is pretty meagre.

(FBI is total output less total costs)

If they are mostly making a profit of well under £100k four years running off the labour of at least a handful of staff, a chunk of subsidies and a couple of £M of assets then something more fundamental needs to change.

I mean no wonder borrowing money for new plant is difficult.

If the average FBI of an entire farm is roughly equivalent to what a sole trader in any other business would make and 40% of that income is subsidies, I'm going to suggest that any reduction in receipts from some of these farms being broken up is negligible.

You can suggest what you like. I'm not sure that your assumptions cover the total tax take - so VAT, income tax, NI, rates, etc.

But in any event my point does not just apply to farms but businesses generally so a focus on farm profitability only looks at one part of this issue.

How is that related to IHT which what we're talking about?

This. As sympathetic as I am towards family farms, who often do struggle to make a living, I don't see why they should be exempt from planning their business succession, like any other business, any more than individuals who are struggling to pay income tax should be given a pass by HMRC.

This also applies to other businesses now - and should not, for the same reasons I gave above.

You've missed a glaring point - until the budget there was no need to carry out your succession planning beyond what was already being done. The budget change gives them less than 2 years to sort something out that normally takes 7 years or more to do.....

And at what age do you put inplace this succession planning? By your own admission you have failed to do anything yet in your business, and you are what age? 50+?

It is helpful to be a professional though as you do not have a capital (and I include land in that) intensive business. Like me, you basically need an office, a few chairs and desks and some IT equipment.

You also miss the effective combination of APR and BPR into a single relief of £1.0 m.

That's nonsense. What need was there if the land and assets were going to be passed free of IHT under APR and BPR? Have an appropriate will in place and that's all that was needed.

How do you suggest a 50 yo farmer (or any business owner) should be structuring their succession planning when they expect to be working for another 15-20 years at least?

I realise that things are nice and straightforward in rjsterryland, for example where you know years in advance when you will die, or are in some nice straightforward arrangement involving only spouses, parents or children. Sadly out in the real world that isn't the case.

It would have been far easier to stick a penny on VAT and get far more with very little noise. But Labour painted themselves into their fiscal corner.

He might have a point.

Honestly who GAF about some idiots blocking the streets. I guess it was a bit cold and wet for gluing themselves to stuff. Hope they didn't hold up any ambulances 😱

Typical urban leftie dismissal of the issues.