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I don't always agree with Will Hutton, but on inheritance tax and farming, I think he's on the right track - we need to remake farming & IHT is one mechanism for starting to do that - farming needs to move beyond a semi-feudal hoarding of land & look to different modes of agricultural organisation.
He is right about the direction in which farming policy needs to move; its just contemporary farmers often find it difficult to see that....
@ChrisMayLA6 These 2 guys talked about it too recently on their pod
@ChrisMayLA6 Is the farmhouse included in the tax or is it treated like a non farm house?
That's an interesting Q.; I imagine its treated as a primary residence with the land treated as agricultural land, but I'm not sure.... so then I looked & this is what I (quickly) found:
https://www.gov.uk/hmrc-internal-manuals/capital-gains-manual/cg64680
@ChrisMayLA6 Afraid I’d put this in the <insert item of the week for pro-Starmer puff> category more than a useful idea.
Whatever thinking (or lack of) is going on in Defra and the Treasury, the combination of McTernan’s comment “do to the farmers what Thatcher did to the miners”, “we don't need small farmers", and no increase in the nature-friendly farming budget, does not speak of a govt with a plan.
Fair enough.... it was the direction of travel I was sympathetic to, more than the detail
@BashStKid @ChrisMayLA6 I think the commentary around this tax rise is really overblown, mainly because it affects some wealthy folks. There's a lot of ways for genuine family farms to reduce the costs of this or avoid them altogether.
Yep, there's a lot of 'alliance building' going on; once again farmers with little interest in politics are being led astray by those willing to galvanise their 'outrage'.... I hesitate to use the term 'useful idiots' as I know some farmers round here who aren't really idiots, but are just completely consumed by their farms & the attention they require.... but I'm sometimes tempted by the term
@ChrisMayLA6 @Sammurraysutton Not for the first time, the right wing win by being the only group to turn up with their fake concern. Farage will be on this like a seagull on chips, while Labour ministers will be hiding.
@ChrisMayLA6 I recently stayed with a wonderful farming family in Scotland. Dad runs a pig farm, for someone else, and they live in a rented house that’s in terrible condition. Eldest son manages a dairy herd, for someone else, and lives in a house that doesn’t actually meet basic standards for human habitation. This is the reality for so many people who actually do the farming. I’m all for land ownership becoming more diverse.
Thanks for sharing this; it's a useful corrective to the grandstanding by some farmers who actually are in a sense part of the problem (as land harder, in Hutton's terminology)
I grew up like that, then the GLC bought the farm (for ILEA education purposes) and suddenly our tied cottage needed 9 months renovation to make it livable.
The landowner had never cared.
@ChrisMayLA6 @Thebratdragon nope. There’s a lot of that.
@Wifiwits @ChrisMayLA6 This reminds of Chesterton's comment that the problem with capitalism is that there are too few capitalists! A dry observation about the concentration of wealth and property.
Of course, I'd forgotten that; thanks for the reminder
@Wifiwits @ChrisMayLA6 My grandfather's family were sharecroppers in Hungary who came to Canada to escape from that remnant of feudalism. It's sad that it still exists.
@ChrisMayLA6 So if your land, equipment and livestock are worth £2M, why not sell it and live off the interest? 3% of £2M is £60k, which is a pretty comfy wage for doing nothing instead of slogging your guts out 12 hours a day doing dirty dangerous work in all weathers.
The nearest I've heard to an answer is "tradition", leaving the farm to the next generation, who are presumably supposed to be grateful for the opportunity to have the same lifestyle
@tokensane @ChrisMayLA6 not so long ago many farmers were unhappy that their children wouldn’t want to be a farmer. Also there are lots of tenant farmers
@John_Loader @ChrisMayLA6 Tenant farmers don't have to pay inheritance tax on the value of their land, which is what the current fuss is about.
@tokensane @ChrisMayLA6 because they don’t own it. Like renters of houses
Another point that seems to have been missed is that they would have ten years to pay #inheritancetax rather than having to pay in proportion to moveable assets before grant of probate and the remainder as soon as practical thereafter - normally not more than a year or two. Claims that they would face an immediate bill for the entire sum are inaccurate.
accuracy was never going to be part of this particular political tussle