I didnt get to hear all that interview, but wasnt a very large landowner of Sussex mentioned .?
[News] Farmers
- Thread starter Harry Wilson's tackle
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You'd better get cracking then Lord Piltdown - make your estate pay
Top post just above this one - thanks. It's another of these things that were originally set up to help, and end up getting abused - then when they end them, it's generally not the abusers who actually get penalised, they find a way out.
You miss the most serious point here. Land that is sold will not be bought up and farmed by a wannabee farmer because the purchase price (c.£12000/acre) makes it impossible to earn a living from farming (typical arable output before the deduction of any costs is c£500/acre p.a.). Therefore the land is lost to food production. However, if it is passed down to the next generation it will continue to be farmed.
However, if IHT is charged it will be impossible for the next gen to pay the bill and keep the farm because of the size of the tax bill (remember the value includes machinery, livestock, buildings etc so even the smallest farms will not be able to sell off a proportion to pay the tax. Again, the smaller farms will be hit the most because even losing a tiny% of their land can make the difference between viability and uneconomic) In which case the farm will be sold and of course the farmer, quite rightly, will pay full IHT if the cash is left to the family. However, the land will still not produce food again.
It would be a good thing if non farmers are put off buying land by closing the IHT 'loophole' (it is one of the principal reasons why land values have lost all relation to their earning capacity when farmed). All is needed is a more nuanced approach that enables farms to be passed down from farmer to farmer so the land continues to produce food.
Like with the winter fuel payment fiasco, it would appear Labour do not understand 'nuanced'
nicko31
Well-known member
How did farmers survive before IHT exemption. The whole thing is overblow hysteria pedalled by the usual suspects, many of who don't live here or pay tax here.
I wish there was as much upset about levels of child poverty in this country.
- Thread starter
- #406
So the choice is import cheap food or give farmers unfair tax breaks to continue their bucolic (albeit working 8 days a week 53 months year, apparently) existence for reasons of (checks the internet) tradition?
Somehow I suspect there may be a flaw in your narrative.
I do agree that Labour seem to be unwilling to consider nuance. Or maybe they have looked into how much it would cost to manage nuance.
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- Thread starter
- #407
They work 8 days a week and 53 months a year because they love are country. Clueless.
Rdodge30
Well-known member
- Dec 30, 2022
- 772
Facetious. (As always?)They work 8 days a week and 53 months a year because they love are country. Clueless.
Well it should, but it won’t, you only need to look around our own countryside here in Sussex to know that isn’t the case.
chip
Well-known member
Or just decided to ignore it like putting 100000 pensioners into poverty.
Maybe we should stop subsidising other things like steel, cars, energy and go full on capitalist. Maybe some of us care where our food comes from and how it is produced. Not really nuance (noun: nuance; plural noun: nuances a subtle difference in or shade of meaning, expression, or sound).
Machiavelli
Well-known member
Regarding your first point, I genuinely was unaware of that. But isn't that what's the problem? All we have is a system in which agricultural land is held in the same hands -- this used to be known as feudalism. This means that 1% of the population own 50% of the land (see further up this page), and the feudal argument against IHT including the defence of its loopholes ensures that:
-- land is passed on to younger generations of farming families irrespective of whether they want to farm the land
-- those that do want to farm the land can't because they were born to the wrong parents.
You'd better get cracking then Lord Piltdown - make your estate pay
Top post just above this one - thanks. It's another of these things that were originally set up to help, and end up getting abused - then when they end them, it's generally not the abusers who actually get penalised, they find a way out.
Sold my land. Now just live on the Oakham Estate.
Really
What's farming? Seriously.
To get around the term agricultural land you only have to have a few "pet" sheep, as little as 4. You can't force people to commercial farm.
BrightonCottager
Well-known member
Good post. Farmers and other landowners should be paid for reducing flooding but I don't think that Defra included it in the Environmental Land Management system.
I know you cannot force people to farm but if you prohibit land being sold off for housing etc then at least it will stop this. This was my point.
Land sold for houses isn't the cause though is it?
Ordnance Survey data suggests that all the buildings in the UK - houses, shops, offices, factories, greenhouses - cover 1.4% of the total land surface. Looking at England alone, the figure still rises to only 2%. Buildings cover less of Britain than the land revealed when the tide goes out.
I presumed it was one. What other options was @abc referring to?
- Thread starter
- #420
Maybe.
(As with the farmers and their tax-free status one wonders how the pensioners survived before the winter fuel allowance was brought in. It is almost as if, until Thatcher and Johnson introduced their generous socialist concessions on tax free farm inheritance and winter fuel allowance, respectively, we had no farming industry and the old people all died every winter).