As I posted earlier why not date it. Farms/land owned before a certain date will remain exempt those after or parts thereof are. If a traditional farm has bought further land it is that land that is used for calculation.
Not exactly a hard thing to determine.
Huge amount of farms rent further land from large land owners. Also many of these small farms are hobby farms, such as mine were. They still produce but small scale. Many like mine never make a penny profit.
The average farm is over 200 acres.
So these young farmers are going to get their money from where to buy the farm? You cannot expect to run a farm with any profit with less than about 100 acres. What bank is ever going to lend money to a start up business in such a low wealth creation and is known to be high risk.
So they could easily sort that by looking at when land was bought and by who. If a farm has been owned by the same family for x amount of years and is then passed down the line they are exempt. If the land was bought since Y date then the passing of that down the line is subject to IHT...
I can assure you farmers think of this most of the time. To suddenly out of the blue to be told everything is changing without any consultation is plainly wrong. Defra didn't even know!!
Average age of a farmer in this country is 59, 33% are over 65. Most work every day of the year, long hours, most well below minimum wage and many on their own.
Just from my experience when I farmed, I made about £25 profit per pig and £18 per lamb.
There's already a crisis in farming in...
Go to Bruges every year for a long weekend with two of my mates. Off next week in fact 2 nights Bruges 1 night Ypres. Atmospheric, buy Antiques and drink beer. Taking the van this year.