Starmer's plan to make farms liable to inheritance tax is a terrible mistake. That our farmers are increasingly ageing due to the impossibility of the young entering the industry with the high cost of farmland in this country is already a serious problem. The only bright spot is inheritance where farmer's own children inherit the farm at no cost to carry on running it.
But Starmers plan may kill that.
Only yesterday listening to one such young adult who has been looking forward to continuing the 200 acre farm from the father soon showed the scale of the problem. Prime farmland with a value of well over £2 million means a liability of £400,000 at the minimum 20% inheritance rate. Where can they find that £400,000 to inherit the farm? Farming just doesn't pay well enough to borrow that much, farms are relatively cash poor. So they'll have to sell it to meet the tax bill and pocket the balance of the cash to pay to rent it from the investor who buys it.
But that doesn't work well either so they may not bother. Even before Starmers plan the large farm next door to me is giving up the unequal struggle after being run by two generations, father followed by elder son and then by younger son who is now packing in. With no chance of anyone else trying, it's now being taken over by Surrey Wildlife Trust who will be running if on best environmental lines, in part to house their grazing herds between use to maintain land elsewhere, so no longer a fully productive commercial farm.
.
Professor explains how inheritance tax loophole crippled British farming
Paul Cheshire says the tax loophole simply created "impoverished millionaires who claimed a need for more support".
www.thelondoneconomic.com