People often ask for a definition of woke-ness. Here's one from John Gray in the New Statesman.
"Woke – or, as it is more accurately described, hyper-liberalism – is a radical secular avatar of Christianity, in which the Protestant affirmation of personal autonomy in matters of belief has morphed into the assertion that truth is subjective."
Next up, after Jeremy “I bought my farm in order to avoid inheritance tax“ Clarkson; that well known farmer Andrew Lloyd Webber, who definitely hasn’t bought 5,000 acres in order to avoid inheritance tax: https://x.com/Otto_English/status/1858860636609876027
Really not sure leading with these guys is doing the farming lobby any favours with the wider public? But maybe that’s just my left-liberal bubble speaking.
I'm not remotely left-liberal, but I don't get the sentimental drivel people spout about farming, any more than I did about coal mines in the 90s. Like any other marginal industry, if farmers can't survive without their epic tax breaks and subsidies they should go under, to allow the labour, land and capital to be used more efficiently by others. And small farms that benefit from the IHT break are exactly the least efficient ones that should go under first. Property doesn't suddenly become a national treasure because you plant crops or whatever on it. The world isn't short of food.
Having lower IHT is a good idea, but we should lower the overall rate rather than give out undeserved bungs to special interest groups, many of whom just use it as a tax dodge anyway.
Ultra libertarian fanaticism with no concern for the national interest.
We should have kept some coal mines as we need to secure our own energy in the age of Putin and lockdowns and renewables and nuclear alone are nowhere near enough as yet to supply it all.
We need to grow more of our own food even more so and the best way to provide food for the nation is family farms rooted in the land
Congratulations.
That is literally the most evidence free post I have ever seen on PB. And I've read @Leon's posts about AI.
Nothing evidence free about it, as I said we need to secure our own energy and our own food.
It is no wonder free market globalist liberals like you are losing elections all over the world at the moment. As you are so focused on being citizens of nowhere, living anywhere as long as it is expensive and working for global corporations and organisations you have forgotten the interests of the nation you were born and raised in and its people
"the best way to provide food for the nation is family farms rooted in the land"
Is it? Does that actually produce more food? I mean, it might do. But it's a bald assertion made without the tiniest scintilla of actual evidence.
I think it's the best way to provide good quality food. I look at American produce quality and shudder.
And American food isn't even cheap now....
It was never as cheap as ours. Farms, combined with the highly competitive food retail sector have given us the best food for the money in the developed world - second to France I'd say, but nobody else. Saying how broken it all is and how we should put two fingers up to Farmer Giles and get Monsanto in to do it better is peak left wing hypocritical tribe.
Farmers have always had a rough deal from governments. Remember the campaigns over the milk price.
Successive governments have prioritised cheap food for the masses over farmers' economic wellbeing. And I don't necessarily disagree with that.
But hence the anger over this measure.
That's because there are 70 million people that consume food, and a few hundred thousand that produce it. And given that - especially for the poorest - their food costs are an enormous chunk of their income, then it would be politically brave to prioritize farmers' incomes over pensioners dinners.
Well at the moment this useless government is proposing to destroy farmers incomes and assets and freeze lots of pensioners to death in winter so is prioritising neither!
How does changing IHT have even the slightest impact on farmers' incomes?
The proponents of the changes advocate that farmers should use all the elaborate mechanisms to avoid the IHT - gifts, trusts and companies.
Setting up and maintaining such structures is not free. In addition, the normal operating purchases and sales of food, materials and equipment by/from the farms will be complicated. Complicated usually equals cost.
The simple reason for IHT relief is that forcing them to sell assets to pay tax undermines the viability of the farm. We have reliefs for private businesses so the heirs aren’t forced to sell to pay tax, Farma should be treated the same
The 100% reliefs for private businesses are also going away - they will be subject to the same 20% IHT as agricultural land for valuations over £1million IIRC.
Again I think this is daft. The farms are the most extreme example of asset rich/cash poor but I am sure some manufacturies with millions in bulding and plant costs woudl also fall into this trap. This really is a very poorly thought out idea.
And all going on whilst the Government still refuses to make multinationals pay proper tax or deal with things like workers of pension age paying no NI.
Well, if getting rid of exemptions is all the range these days, then let's get rid of the exemptions from VAT: food, books and children's clothes. All those people over-eating, sitting on their arses reading and getting fat - and as for children: all that snot and those germs! Bunch of tax dodgers the lot of them.
And if people complain, well it's to save/worship the NHS and keep train drivers in comfort. So they'll have to suck it up.
Well done Kemi. This is what winning back our lost voters looks like, not hob nobbing with whatever special or corporate interest group and donor class.
Yes, not bad from Kemi. I'd like her to seize the initiative even more and come out with a little mini-manifesto for farming and food. Just opposing the worst excesses of Labour isn't enough - we need an alternative vision of a prosperous and plentiful country. But not bad.
Dan Neidle’s going for it on APR. I suspect his TwiX follower count is taking a hit.
Here’s what he’s just posted on LinkedIn.
The Country Land and Business Association says the new £1m cap on agricultural inheritance tax relief will "harm 70,000 farms". That's 1/3 of all farms.
What does the actual data show? Less than 500 farms/year will pay more tax as a result of this change every year. Possibly as few as 100.
Why 500? Because this table shows only 500 farm estates claimed agricultural property relief (APR) of more than £1m in 2022.
But that overstates the issue. Married couples can easily claim the £1m cap twice. Small farmers without other assets can use their nil rate band. So for a married couple running a farm, it could be worth £2.65m before the restriction on the relief costs them a penny.
That could mean as few as 100 farms per year are affected. And the 20% tax is only on the excess over the threshold, so for most of the 100, the additional tax will be reasonably small. Insure against it when you're young(ish). Give some/all to your kids when you get older.
And the data shows that most of the cost of the tax increase will be borne by a few very large estates. In 2022 2% of agricultural estates - just 37 - claimed an average of £6m.
That's what this is really about - not 70,000 farms. So let's drop the hyperbolic fake stats.
All of which means, of course, that it won’t raise much money either. Whereas BPR…
Neidle is talking bollocks - and of course doing so on behalf of the Labour Party as he sits on their National Constitutional Committee. The idea he is some sort of independent expert is garbage.
Which bit is bollocks? The numbers seem plausible enough and are taken from recent historical data, rather than hypotheticals.
Dan’s analysis on most topics in the last year or so has been pretty objective and usually technically spot on. He also makes use of a large range of tax specialists who prefer to keep out of the limelight when he’s commenting on areas he’s not an expert in. He has both publicly rubbished various allegations of tax avoidance or evasion against Tory MPs, and been extremely critical of the NI changes, so the evidence he’s just spouting Labour propaganda is pretty thin.
Yep, Tyndall is being an arse.
If that is the sum total of your contribution to this debate then probably best if you just admit it and fuck off now.
You are being an arse. Unless you want to actually say why Neidle's claims are wrong and not just call bias?
I already explained why but you are clearly too dumb to understand.
Let me give you one example where he is wrong.
He claims that "Small farmers without other assets can use their nil rate band". Except they can't. If the Estate is worth more than £2 million then the nil rate band tapers off to zero.
In addition the NFU - who should be in a position to know - state that the average farm size is just over 250 acres. That is around £2.5 million in land value alone without equipment. plant, livestock or the house. The average value of a farm business is well over £3 million.
Mind you I am not surprised that he is confused when even the Government can't get their numbers straight.
The Treasury has said 73% of APR claims are below £1 million and so would be unaffected by this policy. However, Defra’s figures show that only 34% of farms are under £1 million net worth.
It might be nice if the Government itself could at least get its figures straight.
If you go around accusing other people of being dumb, you should at least try and get things right yourself, otherwise you look like a bit of an arse.
For estates worth > £2million only the residence portion of the nil rate band tapers off to zero. The estate still retains the ordinary nil rate band of £325k (£650k for a married couple).
(This post is now a hostage to fortune naturally: anyone want to give odds on my being wrong instead?)
You are right but you are repeating exactly what I said. So not sure what point you are trying to make. The nil band rate is not the £325K, only the £175K. The £325K is the basic inheritence tax allowance which is entirely separate.
It’s clear from the HMRC document I linked to that tax people call the first £325k the “nil rate band” and the £175k you get extra if you pass on a residential property the “residential nil rate band”.
It is you who have misunderstood Dan Neidle I think.
Nope. I just did a random check at MSE to confirm and they say the same thing I did.
"£325,000 – this is the basic inheritance tax allowance that everyone gets, which still applies.
£175,000 – since 2017, everyone has also been able to take advantage of something called the 'residence nil-rate band', commonly known as the 'main residence' band."
People often ask for a definition of woke-ness. Here's one from John Gray in the New Statesman.
"Woke – or, as it is more accurately described, hyper-liberalism – is a radical secular avatar of Christianity, in which the Protestant affirmation of personal autonomy in matters of belief has morphed into the assertion that truth is subjective."
People often ask for a definition of woke-ness. Here's one from John Gray in the New Statesman.
"Woke – or, as it is more accurately described, hyper-liberalism – is a radical secular avatar of Christianity, in which the Protestant affirmation of personal autonomy in matters of belief has morphed into the assertion that truth is subjective."
I read that sentence three times and I'm still none the wiser.
I've seen many definitions, and think some are good (nor do I think a difficulty in precisely defining nebulous concepts is in itself a sign they are not a thing), but that one is just nonsense.
I have an idea fir a compromise. Farmers can designate their land as Public Interest Land. If they do that land is exempt from IHT completely. But there is a catch. If they obtain planning permussion for any land they pay extra tax when they sell it. And they have to agree to not plough up SSSIs, block public footpaths, rip out hedgerows etc.
An interesting idea. Worth having been discussed prior to the introduction of the tax change.
Or an IHT “charge”. If any of the exempted property is disposed of within 50 years of the previous owners death, the tax becomes due at the time of sale.
Yep:
This should be the big one, because I will bet you that a very large number of farms are sold shortly after having benefited from the IHT exemption.
Which is the dodge the government was trying to stamp out. My proposal would do that, but eliminate any need for trusts, gifts etc for farmers passing on their land to another generation.
See:
It turns out that PB can find perfectly sensible compromises pretty quickly.
Once again, I suggest the following -
Monetise PB as a “Road test & debug your policy proposals” group.
Policies are presented to a non-public board, with membership selected from PB. The membership of the board share in the fee for their services.
There was a strong suspicion that it was being used for that purpose (for free) during the Cameron years.
In spite of my views I think he is right here. Has any major protest ever worked? The poll tax stuff felled Thatcher but really it was more of an excuse to get rid of her than the reason.
Iraq War - nope Gaza - nope Countryside alliance - nope Brexit protests - nope. CND marches of the 1960s - nope
Serious question, has any major protest of this kind ever actually got a reversal in a policy? I mean in the UK of course. Some European protests seem to have more success and the CIvil Rights Marches in the US certainly made a difference.
In spite of my views I think he is right here. Has any major protest ever worked? The poll tax stuff felled Thatcher but really it was more of an excuse to get rid of her than the reason.
Iraq War - nope Gaza - nope Countryside alliance - nope Brexit protests - nope. CND marches of the 1960s - nope
Serious question, has any major protest of this kind ever actually got a reversal in a policy? I mean in the UK of course. Some European protests seem to have more success and the CIvil Rights Marches in the US certainly made a difference.
Sorry but all this feels a bit irrelevant compared to this.
I find the whole of UK politics essentially irrelevant right now. We have to wait and see exactly how much of the mad things Trump has pledged to do that he actually does. I expect that some of them will have far more effect on our lives that anything Starmer proposes to do.
In spite of my views I think he is right here. Has any major protest ever worked? The poll tax stuff felled Thatcher but really it was more of an excuse to get rid of her than the reason.
Iraq War - nope Gaza - nope Countryside alliance - nope Brexit protests - nope. CND marches of the 1960s - nope
Serious question, has any major protest of this kind ever actually got a reversal in a policy? I mean in the UK of course. Some European protests seem to have more success and the CIvil Rights Marches in the US certainly made a difference.
The pasty tax revolt of George Osborne's making? Admittedly, I can't actually remember much protesting, but the reaction did cause a U-turn.
I have an idea fir a compromise. Farmers can designate their land as Public Interest Land. If they do that land is exempt from IHT completely. But there is a catch. If they obtain planning permussion for any land they pay extra tax when they sell it. And they have to agree to not plough up SSSIs, block public footpaths, rip out hedgerows etc.
An interesting idea. Worth having been discussed prior to the introduction of the tax change.
Or an IHT “charge”. If any of the exempted property is disposed of within 50 years of the previous owners death, the tax becomes due at the time of sale.
Yep:
This should be the big one, because I will bet you that a very large number of farms are sold shortly after having benefited from the IHT exemption.
Which is the dodge the government was trying to stamp out. My proposal would do that, but eliminate any need for trusts, gifts etc for farmers passing on their land to another generation.
See:
It turns out that PB can find perfectly sensible compromises pretty quickly.
Once again, I suggest the following -
Monetise PB as a “Road test & debug your policy proposals” group.
Policies are presented to a non-public board, with membership selected from PB. The membership of the board share in the fee for their services.
There was a strong suspicion that it was being used for that purpose (for free) during the Cameron years.
Oh dear. So the mess we are in is our fault on here?
Dan Neidle’s going for it on APR. I suspect his TwiX follower count is taking a hit.
Here’s what he’s just posted on LinkedIn.
The Country Land and Business Association says the new £1m cap on agricultural inheritance tax relief will "harm 70,000 farms". That's 1/3 of all farms.
What does the actual data show? Less than 500 farms/year will pay more tax as a result of this change every year. Possibly as few as 100.
Why 500? Because this table shows only 500 farm estates claimed agricultural property relief (APR) of more than £1m in 2022.
But that overstates the issue. Married couples can easily claim the £1m cap twice. Small farmers without other assets can use their nil rate band. So for a married couple running a farm, it could be worth £2.65m before the restriction on the relief costs them a penny.
That could mean as few as 100 farms per year are affected. And the 20% tax is only on the excess over the threshold, so for most of the 100, the additional tax will be reasonably small. Insure against it when you're young(ish). Give some/all to your kids when you get older.
And the data shows that most of the cost of the tax increase will be borne by a few very large estates. In 2022 2% of agricultural estates - just 37 - claimed an average of £6m.
That's what this is really about - not 70,000 farms. So let's drop the hyperbolic fake stats.
All of which means, of course, that it won’t raise much money either. Whereas BPR…
Neidle is talking bollocks - and of course doing so on behalf of the Labour Party as he sits on their National Constitutional Committee. The idea he is some sort of independent expert is garbage.
Which bit is bollocks? The numbers seem plausible enough and are taken from recent historical data, rather than hypotheticals.
Dan’s analysis on most topics in the last year or so has been pretty objective and usually technically spot on. He also makes use of a large range of tax specialists who prefer to keep out of the limelight when he’s commenting on areas he’s not an expert in. He has both publicly rubbished various allegations of tax avoidance or evasion against Tory MPs, and been extremely critical of the NI changes, so the evidence he’s just spouting Labour propaganda is pretty thin.
Yep, Tyndall is being an arse.
If that is the sum total of your contribution to this debate then probably best if you just admit it and fuck off now.
You are being an arse. Unless you want to actually say why Neidle's claims are wrong and not just call bias?
I already explained why but you are clearly too dumb to understand.
Let me give you one example where he is wrong.
He claims that "Small farmers without other assets can use their nil rate band". Except they can't. If the Estate is worth more than £2 million then the nil rate band tapers off to zero.
In addition the NFU - who should be in a position to know - state that the average farm size is just over 250 acres. That is around £2.5 million in land value alone without equipment. plant, livestock or the house. The average value of a farm business is well over £3 million.
Mind you I am not surprised that he is confused when even the Government can't get their numbers straight.
The Treasury has said 73% of APR claims are below £1 million and so would be unaffected by this policy. However, Defra’s figures show that only 34% of farms are under £1 million net worth.
It might be nice if the Government itself could at least get its figures straight.
If you go around accusing other people of being dumb, you should at least try and get things right yourself, otherwise you look like a bit of an arse.
For estates worth > £2million only the residence portion of the nil rate band tapers off to zero. The estate still retains the ordinary nil rate band of £325k (£650k for a married couple).
(This post is now a hostage to fortune naturally: anyone want to give odds on my being wrong instead?)
You are right but you are repeating exactly what I said. So not sure what point you are trying to make. The nil band rate is not the £325K, only the £175K. The £325K is the basic inheritence tax allowance which is entirely separate.
It’s clear from the HMRC document I linked to that tax people call the first £325k the “nil rate band” and the £175k you get extra if you pass on a residential property the “residential nil rate band”.
It is you who have misunderstood Dan Neidle I think.
Nope. I just did a random check at MSE to confirm and they say the same thing I did.
"£325,000 – this is the basic inheritance tax allowance that everyone gets, which still applies.
£175,000 – since 2017, everyone has also been able to take advantage of something called the 'residence nil-rate band', commonly known as the 'main residence' band."
I feel like I’m going slightly insane here, but will persevere nonetheless. You stated:
He claims that "Small farmers without other assets can use their nil rate band". Except they can't. If the Estate is worth more than £2 million then the nil rate band tapers off to zero.
The “nil rate band”, as is clear from the HMRC document I posted is the band from £0-£325k. The thing that tapers is the “residential nil rate band” which is another £175k above the nil rate band. The nil rate band does not taper off to zero for estates over £2million, which is what a plain reading of your statement above appears to claim.
The fact that you think Neidle is referring to the residential nil rate band is irrelevant. He is referring to what tax people call the “nil rate band” - the band from £0k-£325k. This does not taper off to zero for estates over £2million, so he is entirely correct that farmers still get to apply their nil rate band to their estates, in addition to the £1million (per partner in a couple) threshold that applies to agricultural property. This is how he gets to a total possible relief for a couple of £2.6million - 2 £1million APR thresholds & 2 nil rate bands of £325k.
Denmark has detained a Chinese ship rumoured to be behind the cutting of the undersea cables in the Baltic Sea.
Last time around it was strongly suspected to be a Chinese ship that just happened to have switched crews and was crewed by a bunch of Russians. I wonder which nationality they’re going to fund the crew on this ship claim to have?
Denmark has detained a Chinese ship rumoured to be behind the cutting of the undersea cables in the Baltic Sea.
But Starmer reset relations with China? This boat captain must not have realised that, @Cicero and the people of Estonia can't be wrong about Starmer trying to suck up to Xi and sell us out to Putin's best mate.
I have an idea fir a compromise. Farmers can designate their land as Public Interest Land. If they do that land is exempt from IHT completely. But there is a catch. If they obtain planning permussion for any land they pay extra tax when they sell it. And they have to agree to not plough up SSSIs, block public footpaths, rip out hedgerows etc.
An interesting idea. Worth having been discussed prior to the introduction of the tax change.
Or an IHT “charge”. If any of the exempted property is disposed of within 50 years of the previous owners death, the tax becomes due at the time of sale.
Yep:
This should be the big one, because I will bet you that a very large number of farms are sold shortly after having benefited from the IHT exemption.
Which is the dodge the government was trying to stamp out. My proposal would do that, but eliminate any need for trusts, gifts etc for farmers passing on their land to another generation.
See:
It turns out that PB can find perfectly sensible compromises pretty quickly.
Once again, I suggest the following -
Monetise PB as a “Road test & debug your policy proposals” group.
Policies are presented to a non-public board, with membership selected from PB. The membership of the board share in the fee for their services.
There was a strong suspicion that it was being used for that purpose (for free) during the Cameron years.
I have an idea fir a compromise. Farmers can designate their land as Public Interest Land. If they do that land is exempt from IHT completely. But there is a catch. If they obtain planning permussion for any land they pay extra tax when they sell it. And they have to agree to not plough up SSSIs, block public footpaths, rip out hedgerows etc.
An interesting idea. Worth having been discussed prior to the introduction of the tax change.
Or an IHT “charge”. If any of the exempted property is disposed of within 50 years of the previous owners death, the tax becomes due at the time of sale.
Yep:
This should be the big one, because I will bet you that a very large number of farms are sold shortly after having benefited from the IHT exemption.
Which is the dodge the government was trying to stamp out. My proposal would do that, but eliminate any need for trusts, gifts etc for farmers passing on their land to another generation.
See:
It turns out that PB can find perfectly sensible compromises pretty quickly.
Once again, I suggest the following -
Monetise PB as a “Road test & debug your policy proposals” group.
Policies are presented to a non-public board, with membership selected from PB. The membership of the board share in the fee for their services.
There was a strong suspicion that it was being used for that purpose (for free) during the Cameron years.
Oh dear. So the mess we are in is our fault on here?
Just as well most of us are pseudononymous.
Look, I got drunk just once and suggested some interesting experiments with corona viruses in bats. Anyone might have suggested it. Who was I to know the Chinese Communist Party uses this site for ideas?
People often ask for a definition of woke-ness. Here's one from John Gray in the New Statesman.
"Woke – or, as it is more accurately described, hyper-liberalism – is a radical secular avatar of Christianity, in which the Protestant affirmation of personal autonomy in matters of belief has morphed into the assertion that truth is subjective."
I read that sentence three times and I'm still none the wiser.
Yes, subjective of truth is more Post-modernism than "Woke". After all Trump is well known to have "alternative facts" and is hardly "Woke".
Woke retains its original definition: being aware of structural inequalities in society, in particular relating to ethnicity and other personal characteristics.
Dan Neidle’s going for it on APR. I suspect his TwiX follower count is taking a hit.
Here’s what he’s just posted on LinkedIn.
The Country Land and Business Association says the new £1m cap on agricultural inheritance tax relief will "harm 70,000 farms". That's 1/3 of all farms.
What does the actual data show? Less than 500 farms/year will pay more tax as a result of this change every year. Possibly as few as 100.
Why 500? Because this table shows only 500 farm estates claimed agricultural property relief (APR) of more than £1m in 2022.
But that overstates the issue. Married couples can easily claim the £1m cap twice. Small farmers without other assets can use their nil rate band. So for a married couple running a farm, it could be worth £2.65m before the restriction on the relief costs them a penny.
That could mean as few as 100 farms per year are affected. And the 20% tax is only on the excess over the threshold, so for most of the 100, the additional tax will be reasonably small. Insure against it when you're young(ish). Give some/all to your kids when you get older.
And the data shows that most of the cost of the tax increase will be borne by a few very large estates. In 2022 2% of agricultural estates - just 37 - claimed an average of £6m.
That's what this is really about - not 70,000 farms. So let's drop the hyperbolic fake stats.
All of which means, of course, that it won’t raise much money either. Whereas BPR…
Neidle is talking bollocks - and of course doing so on behalf of the Labour Party as he sits on their National Constitutional Committee. The idea he is some sort of independent expert is garbage.
Which bit is bollocks? The numbers seem plausible enough and are taken from recent historical data, rather than hypotheticals.
Dan’s analysis on most topics in the last year or so has been pretty objective and usually technically spot on. He also makes use of a large range of tax specialists who prefer to keep out of the limelight when he’s commenting on areas he’s not an expert in. He has both publicly rubbished various allegations of tax avoidance or evasion against Tory MPs, and been extremely critical of the NI changes, so the evidence he’s just spouting Labour propaganda is pretty thin.
Yep, Tyndall is being an arse.
If that is the sum total of your contribution to this debate then probably best if you just admit it and fuck off now.
You are being an arse. Unless you want to actually say why Neidle's claims are wrong and not just call bias?
I already explained why but you are clearly too dumb to understand.
Let me give you one example where he is wrong.
He claims that "Small farmers without other assets can use their nil rate band". Except they can't. If the Estate is worth more than £2 million then the nil rate band tapers off to zero.
In addition the NFU - who should be in a position to know - state that the average farm size is just over 250 acres. That is around £2.5 million in land value alone without equipment. plant, livestock or the house. The average value of a farm business is well over £3 million.
Mind you I am not surprised that he is confused when even the Government can't get their numbers straight.
The Treasury has said 73% of APR claims are below £1 million and so would be unaffected by this policy. However, Defra’s figures show that only 34% of farms are under £1 million net worth.
It might be nice if the Government itself could at least get its figures straight.
Cheers, I'll stop being arse now...
Small seems to be in the eye of the beholder is a < 2 mill farm small, probably... but if 34% are below a million it might be easier to say less than a million is a 'small-farm' . They should easily stay under the threshold with all the allowances in play. But its all semantics, yes?
On the average farm size the UK gov reports it to be ~200 acres this seems to be heavily skewed by high acreage holdings, more than 25% are > 400 acre and a big wedge of those above 1000. Most the farmed UK land is pastoral so £10k an acre is a big assumption its much closer to £7.5k. But yes with all the farming paraphernalia the average farm is probably drawing close to the threshold but the median farm seems unlikely to exceed it.
I don't see where Neidle is talking bollocks.
Farms are quite a bit more than their land value
"average farm size is just over 250 acres."
Should we talking about average rather than median?
There's presumably some tail end landowners with f*ck off size estates here?
Also, 54% of farms are owned, 16% tenanted and the remainder part owned and part tenanted.
Interesting too that more than 50% of agricultural land sales last year were to non-farming owners, so there is a real issue of investment for nonagricultural purposes. I suppose my field would be this, though I do sublet it to a farmer for sheep grazing.
I reckon the Grundys are still OK, maybe the Archers will be bought out by Borsetshire Land.
I have an idea fir a compromise. Farmers can designate their land as Public Interest Land. If they do that land is exempt from IHT completely. But there is a catch. If they obtain planning permussion for any land they pay extra tax when they sell it. And they have to agree to not plough up SSSIs, block public footpaths, rip out hedgerows etc.
An interesting idea. Worth having been discussed prior to the introduction of the tax change.
Or an IHT “charge”. If any of the exempted property is disposed of within 50 years of the previous owners death, the tax becomes due at the time of sale.
Yep:
This should be the big one, because I will bet you that a very large number of farms are sold shortly after having benefited from the IHT exemption.
Which is the dodge the government was trying to stamp out. My proposal would do that, but eliminate any need for trusts, gifts etc for farmers passing on their land to another generation.
See:
It turns out that PB can find perfectly sensible compromises pretty quickly.
Once again, I suggest the following -
Monetise PB as a “Road test & debug your policy proposals” group.
Policies are presented to a non-public board, with membership selected from PB. The membership of the board share in the fee for their services.
There was a strong suspicion that it was being used for that purpose (for free) during the Cameron years.
Oh dear. So the mess we are in is our fault on here?
Just as well most of us are pseudononymous.
Look, I got drunk just once and suggested some interesting experiments with corona viruses in bats. Anyone might have suggested it. Who was I to know the Chinese Communist Party uses this site for ideas?
My idea about the referendum on Europe - does anyone know what happened with that? Or did it just get forgotten?
Denmark has detained a Chinese ship rumoured to be behind the cutting of the undersea cables in the Baltic Sea.
But Starmer reset relations with China? This boat captain must not have realised that, @Cicero and the people of Estonia can't be wrong about Starmer trying to suck up to Xi and sell us out to Putin's best mate.
Y'all expected Starmer's reset of relations with China to go wrong but, be honest, none of ya expected it to go this wrong, this quickly.
Dan Neidle’s going for it on APR. I suspect his TwiX follower count is taking a hit.
Here’s what he’s just posted on LinkedIn.
The Country Land and Business Association says the new £1m cap on agricultural inheritance tax relief will "harm 70,000 farms". That's 1/3 of all farms.
What does the actual data show? Less than 500 farms/year will pay more tax as a result of this change every year. Possibly as few as 100.
Why 500? Because this table shows only 500 farm estates claimed agricultural property relief (APR) of more than £1m in 2022.
But that overstates the issue. Married couples can easily claim the £1m cap twice. Small farmers without other assets can use their nil rate band. So for a married couple running a farm, it could be worth £2.65m before the restriction on the relief costs them a penny.
That could mean as few as 100 farms per year are affected. And the 20% tax is only on the excess over the threshold, so for most of the 100, the additional tax will be reasonably small. Insure against it when you're young(ish). Give some/all to your kids when you get older.
And the data shows that most of the cost of the tax increase will be borne by a few very large estates. In 2022 2% of agricultural estates - just 37 - claimed an average of £6m.
That's what this is really about - not 70,000 farms. So let's drop the hyperbolic fake stats.
All of which means, of course, that it won’t raise much money either. Whereas BPR…
Neidle is talking bollocks - and of course doing so on behalf of the Labour Party as he sits on their National Constitutional Committee. The idea he is some sort of independent expert is garbage.
Which bit is bollocks? The numbers seem plausible enough and are taken from recent historical data, rather than hypotheticals.
Dan’s analysis on most topics in the last year or so has been pretty objective and usually technically spot on. He also makes use of a large range of tax specialists who prefer to keep out of the limelight when he’s commenting on areas he’s not an expert in. He has both publicly rubbished various allegations of tax avoidance or evasion against Tory MPs, and been extremely critical of the NI changes, so the evidence he’s just spouting Labour propaganda is pretty thin.
Yep, Tyndall is being an arse.
If that is the sum total of your contribution to this debate then probably best if you just admit it and fuck off now.
You are being an arse. Unless you want to actually say why Neidle's claims are wrong and not just call bias?
I already explained why but you are clearly too dumb to understand.
Let me give you one example where he is wrong.
He claims that "Small farmers without other assets can use their nil rate band". Except they can't. If the Estate is worth more than £2 million then the nil rate band tapers off to zero.
In addition the NFU - who should be in a position to know - state that the average farm size is just over 250 acres. That is around £2.5 million in land value alone without equipment. plant, livestock or the house. The average value of a farm business is well over £3 million.
Mind you I am not surprised that he is confused when even the Government can't get their numbers straight.
The Treasury has said 73% of APR claims are below £1 million and so would be unaffected by this policy. However, Defra’s figures show that only 34% of farms are under £1 million net worth.
It might be nice if the Government itself could at least get its figures straight.
If you go around accusing other people of being dumb, you should at least try and get things right yourself, otherwise you look like a bit of an arse.
For estates worth > £2million only the residence portion of the nil rate band tapers off to zero. The estate still retains the ordinary nil rate band of £325k (£650k for a married couple).
(This post is now a hostage to fortune naturally: anyone want to give odds on my being wrong instead?)
You are right but you are repeating exactly what I said. So not sure what point you are trying to make. The nil band rate is not the £325K, only the £175K. The £325K is the basic inheritence tax allowance which is entirely separate.
It’s clear from the HMRC document I linked to that tax people call the first £325k the “nil rate band” and the £175k you get extra if you pass on a residential property the “residential nil rate band”.
It is you who have misunderstood Dan Neidle I think.
Nope. I just did a random check at MSE to confirm and they say the same thing I did.
"£325,000 – this is the basic inheritance tax allowance that everyone gets, which still applies.
£175,000 – since 2017, everyone has also been able to take advantage of something called the 'residence nil-rate band', commonly known as the 'main residence' band."
I feel like I’m going slightly insane here, but will persevere nonetheless. You stated:
He claims that "Small farmers without other assets can use their nil rate band". Except they can't. If the Estate is worth more than £2 million then the nil rate band tapers off to zero.
The “nil rate band”, as is clear from the HMRC document I posted is the band from £0-£325k. The thing that tapers is the “residential nil rate band” which is another £175k above the nil rate band. The nil rate band does not taper off to zero for estates over £2million, which is what a plain reading of your statement above appears to claim.
The fact that you think Neidle is referring to the residential nil rate band is irrelevant. He is referring to what tax people call the “nil rate band” - the band from £0k-£325k. This does not taper off to zero for estates over £2million, so he is entirely correct that farmers still get to apply their nil rate band to their estates, in addition to the £1million (per partner in a couple) threshold that applies to agricultural property. This is how he gets to a total possible relief for a couple of £2.6million - 2 £1million APR thresholds & 2 nil rate bands of £325k.
If you are a farmer and absolutely panicking surely you have been to your accountant this week and got the facts?
Do farmers have accountants and tax lawyers and the like on call? The only onr I know definitely didn't operate in that sphere.
Margins are tight. Accountant in the “does the books” sense? Yes. In the “provide advice on maximising opportunities” sense? Doubt it. On the other hand, if you have a “normal” business worth a few million you probably will.
There's always a worryingly large amount of random bits that fall off a spacecraft. The people who get in them are proper mad fuckers.
A car mechanic friend of mine used to reckon that engines had too many nuts and bolts deliberately, as they knew that mechanics would lose a few each time they took it apart.
Dan Neidle’s going for it on APR. I suspect his TwiX follower count is taking a hit.
Here’s what he’s just posted on LinkedIn.
The Country Land and Business Association says the new £1m cap on agricultural inheritance tax relief will "harm 70,000 farms". That's 1/3 of all farms.
What does the actual data show? Less than 500 farms/year will pay more tax as a result of this change every year. Possibly as few as 100.
Why 500? Because this table shows only 500 farm estates claimed agricultural property relief (APR) of more than £1m in 2022.
But that overstates the issue. Married couples can easily claim the £1m cap twice. Small farmers without other assets can use their nil rate band. So for a married couple running a farm, it could be worth £2.65m before the restriction on the relief costs them a penny.
That could mean as few as 100 farms per year are affected. And the 20% tax is only on the excess over the threshold, so for most of the 100, the additional tax will be reasonably small. Insure against it when you're young(ish). Give some/all to your kids when you get older.
And the data shows that most of the cost of the tax increase will be borne by a few very large estates. In 2022 2% of agricultural estates - just 37 - claimed an average of £6m.
That's what this is really about - not 70,000 farms. So let's drop the hyperbolic fake stats.
All of which means, of course, that it won’t raise much money either. Whereas BPR…
Neidle is talking bollocks - and of course doing so on behalf of the Labour Party as he sits on their National Constitutional Committee. The idea he is some sort of independent expert is garbage.
Which bit is bollocks? The numbers seem plausible enough and are taken from recent historical data, rather than hypotheticals.
Dan’s analysis on most topics in the last year or so has been pretty objective and usually technically spot on. He also makes use of a large range of tax specialists who prefer to keep out of the limelight when he’s commenting on areas he’s not an expert in. He has both publicly rubbished various allegations of tax avoidance or evasion against Tory MPs, and been extremely critical of the NI changes, so the evidence he’s just spouting Labour propaganda is pretty thin.
Yep, Tyndall is being an arse.
If that is the sum total of your contribution to this debate then probably best if you just admit it and fuck off now.
You are being an arse. Unless you want to actually say why Neidle's claims are wrong and not just call bias?
I already explained why but you are clearly too dumb to understand.
Let me give you one example where he is wrong.
He claims that "Small farmers without other assets can use their nil rate band". Except they can't. If the Estate is worth more than £2 million then the nil rate band tapers off to zero.
In addition the NFU - who should be in a position to know - state that the average farm size is just over 250 acres. That is around £2.5 million in land value alone without equipment. plant, livestock or the house. The average value of a farm business is well over £3 million.
Mind you I am not surprised that he is confused when even the Government can't get their numbers straight.
The Treasury has said 73% of APR claims are below £1 million and so would be unaffected by this policy. However, Defra’s figures show that only 34% of farms are under £1 million net worth.
It might be nice if the Government itself could at least get its figures straight.
If you go around accusing other people of being dumb, you should at least try and get things right yourself, otherwise you look like a bit of an arse.
For estates worth > £2million only the residence portion of the nil rate band tapers off to zero. The estate still retains the ordinary nil rate band of £325k (£650k for a married couple).
(This post is now a hostage to fortune naturally: anyone want to give odds on my being wrong instead?)
You are right but you are repeating exactly what I said. So not sure what point you are trying to make. The nil band rate is not the £325K, only the £175K. The £325K is the basic inheritence tax allowance which is entirely separate.
It’s clear from the HMRC document I linked to that tax people call the first £325k the “nil rate band” and the £175k you get extra if you pass on a residential property the “residential nil rate band”.
It is you who have misunderstood Dan Neidle I think.
Nope. I just did a random check at MSE to confirm and they say the same thing I did.
"£325,000 – this is the basic inheritance tax allowance that everyone gets, which still applies.
£175,000 – since 2017, everyone has also been able to take advantage of something called the 'residence nil-rate band', commonly known as the 'main residence' band."
I feel like I’m going slightly insane here, but will persevere nonetheless. You stated:
He claims that "Small farmers without other assets can use their nil rate band". Except they can't. If the Estate is worth more than £2 million then the nil rate band tapers off to zero.
The “nil rate band”, as is clear from the HMRC document I posted is the band from £0-£325k. The thing that tapers is the “residential nil rate band” which is another £175k above the nil rate band. The nil rate band does not taper off to zero for estates over £2million, which is what a plain reading of your statement above appears to claim.
The fact that you think Neidle is referring to the residential nil rate band is irrelevant. He is referring to what tax people call the “nil rate band” - the band from £0k-£325k. This does not taper off to zero for estates over £2million, so he is entirely correct that farmers still get to apply their nil rate band to their estates, in addition to the £1million (per partner in a couple) threshold that applies to agricultural property. This is how he gets to a total possible relief for a couple of £2.6million - 2 £1million APR thresholds & 2 nil rate bands of £325k.
We need less romanticised view of farming as family run small businesses.
As a country the thing we are sorely lacking is productivity growth. We should welcome companies investing in farmland, merging of farms and aiming to improve output.
We should not welcome rich millionaires buying farmland as a tax loophole / hobby and probably reducing output vs. its potential.
The distortion in farmland prices that arises from that also makes it impossible for genuine farmers or farming companies to expand as the yield on the land cost is too low.
Finally, arguing that there are many tax loopholes so we shouldn't close this one isn't the best argument. We should strive to continue to close loopholes or - even better - change it to an annual wealth tax levy.
"This is the recorded track of the Yi Peng 3. Notice the variation in the track approximately in the centre of my screenshot. It essentially crosses back and forth over the undersea cable."
"This is the recorded track of the Yi Peng 3. Notice the variation in the track approximately in the centre of my screenshot. It essentially crosses back and forth over the undersea cable."
In spite of my views I think he is right here. Has any major protest ever worked? The poll tax stuff felled Thatcher but really it was more of an excuse to get rid of her than the reason.
Iraq War - nope Gaza - nope Countryside alliance - nope Brexit protests - nope. CND marches of the 1960s - nope
Serious question, has any major protest of this kind ever actually got a reversal in a policy? I mean in the UK of course. Some European protests seem to have more success and the CIvil Rights Marches in the US certainly made a difference.
Gurkhas Free school meals - Rashford Dunno if you'd see them as major?
In spite of my views I think he is right here. Has any major protest ever worked? The poll tax stuff felled Thatcher but really it was more of an excuse to get rid of her than the reason.
Iraq War - nope Gaza - nope Countryside alliance - nope Brexit protests - nope. CND marches of the 1960s - nope
Serious question, has any major protest of this kind ever actually got a reversal in a policy? I mean in the UK of course. Some European protests seem to have more success and the CIvil Rights Marches in the US certainly made a difference.
Gurkhas Free school meals - Rashford Dunno if you'd see them as major?
The thing about the tuition fees protests is that they obviously didn't reverse the tripling of tuition fees to £9,000, but you could argue they prevented the government from indexing them later.
More than a decade later and Labour is only just now going to apply the second increase to them.
That is surely because of the protests and the anger they were a symptom of.
In spite of my views I think he is right here. Has any major protest ever worked? The poll tax stuff felled Thatcher but really it was more of an excuse to get rid of her than the reason.
Iraq War - nope Gaza - nope Countryside alliance - nope Brexit protests - nope. CND marches of the 1960s - nope
Serious question, has any major protest of this kind ever actually got a reversal in a policy? I mean in the UK of course. Some European protests seem to have more success and the CIvil Rights Marches in the US certainly made a difference.
Gurkhas Free school meals - Rashford Dunno if you'd see them as major?
So you’re saying the farmers need to get Joanna Lumley in?
"This is the recorded track of the Yi Peng 3. Notice the variation in the track approximately in the centre of my screenshot. It essentially crosses back and forth over the undersea cable."
In spite of my views I think he is right here. Has any major protest ever worked? The poll tax stuff felled Thatcher but really it was more of an excuse to get rid of her than the reason.
Iraq War - nope Gaza - nope Countryside alliance - nope Brexit protests - nope. CND marches of the 1960s - nope
Serious question, has any major protest of this kind ever actually got a reversal in a policy? I mean in the UK of course. Some European protests seem to have more success and the CIvil Rights Marches in the US certainly made a difference.
They work if they have voters behind them in polls, which this farmers protest does as did the Civil Rights Marches in the US.
In 2003 by contrast most voters backed the Iraq War and toppling Saddam, in 2002 most voters wanted hunting foxes with hounds banned, in 2016 most voters voted for Brexit and in 2019 for Boris to deliver it and in the 1960s most voters backed a nuclear deterrent while the Soviet Union had nukes. The Gaza protests are irrelevant as the UK can't control what Israel does anyway.
In 1990 by contrast the poll tax protests were successful as they had voters behind them and Thatcher was toppled by her own party by the end of the year and replaced by John Major who scrapped the poll tax and replaced it with council tax.
The fact most voters and all opposition parties oppose the tractor tax is crucial because on the latest polls Labour likely will lose its majority at the next GE
In spite of my views I think he is right here. Has any major protest ever worked? The poll tax stuff felled Thatcher but really it was more of an excuse to get rid of her than the reason.
Iraq War - nope Gaza - nope Countryside alliance - nope Brexit protests - nope. CND marches of the 1960s - nope
Serious question, has any major protest of this kind ever actually got a reversal in a policy? I mean in the UK of course. Some European protests seem to have more success and the CIvil Rights Marches in the US certainly made a difference.
Gurkhas Free school meals - Rashford Dunno if you'd see them as major?
Sorry, I wasn't just talking about campaigns as such but more specifically about going to London and marching around.
I did my fair share when I was a student - mostly involving anti-vivisection - but I don't think in reteospect it made much difference except to reassure me there were lots of other people who felt the same way.
And yes I see both your examples as important but perhaps not 'major' in terms of getting people on the streets.
"This is the recorded track of the Yi Peng 3. Notice the variation in the track approximately in the centre of my screenshot. It essentially crosses back and forth over the undersea cable."
It’s hard to take a read on geopolitics for the next few years (assuming we have them…) isn’t it? Putin in bed with China to this extent makes Trump a very unpredictable actor. And he has notably not criticised Biden’s recent move (unless I have missed it).
I can’t read it any more. But we do know Trump won’t stabilise anything. Doomsday clock must have advanced a tick.
In spite of my views I think he is right here. Has any major protest ever worked? The poll tax stuff felled Thatcher but really it was more of an excuse to get rid of her than the reason.
Iraq War - nope Gaza - nope Countryside alliance - nope Brexit protests - nope. CND marches of the 1960s - nope
Serious question, has any major protest of this kind ever actually got a reversal in a policy? I mean in the UK of course. Some European protests seem to have more success and the CIvil Rights Marches in the US certainly made a difference.
They work if they have voters behind them in polls, which this farmers protest does.
In 2003 by contrast most voters backed the Iraq War and toppling Saddam, in 2002 most voters wanted hunting foxes with hounds banned, in 2016 most voters voted for Brexit and in 2019 for Boris to deliver it and in the 1960s most voters backed a nuclear deterrent while the Soviet Union had nukes. The Gaza protests are irrelevant as the UK can't control what Israel does anyway.
In 1990 by contrast the poll tax protests were successful as they had voters behind them and Thatcher was toppled by her own party by the end of the year and replaced by John Major who scrapped the poll tax and replaced it with council tax.
The fact most voters and all opposition parties oppose the tractor tax is crucial because on the latest polls Labour likely will lose its majority at the next GE
It could be argued that the 2000 fuel protests are the reason Labour didn't whack 10p on petrol in the budget. So maybe they work on the future.
Mail making it clear that the farmers are led by Clarkson.
Maybe that will help them? I'm not so sure.
It’s long been obvious that if the uk were to go down the path of non politicians entering politics, that Clarkson would have a gilded path. I’ve also long felt the same about JK Rowling from the left. Now that would be an election debate worth watching. Some good humoured pragmatism and then off to get some stuff done.
We need less romanticised view of farming as family run small businesses.
As a country the thing we are sorely lacking is productivity growth. We should welcome companies investing in farmland, merging of farms and aiming to improve output.
We should not welcome rich millionaires buying farmland as a tax loophole / hobby and probably reducing output vs. its potential.
The distortion in farmland prices that arises from that also makes it impossible for genuine farmers or farming companies to expand as the yield on the land cost is too low.
Finally, arguing that there are many tax loopholes so we shouldn't close this one isn't the best argument. We should strive to continue to close loopholes or - even better - change it to an annual wealth tax levy.
Unfortuntely improving output generally involves ripping out hedges, spraying poisons and generally fucking over the countryside. At least as we have tried it so far. The Chemical Brothers farmlands writtten about by John Lewis-Stempel really are as close to desert as we are likely to get in this country. The groundis, to all intents and purposes, dead. And it is unsustainable. Hence the work by Gove on soil depletion.
Next up, after Jeremy “I bought my farm in order to avoid inheritance tax“ Clarkson; that well known farmer Andrew Lloyd Webber, who definitely hasn’t bought 5,000 acres in order to avoid inheritance tax: https://x.com/Otto_English/status/1858860636609876027
Really not sure leading with these guys is doing the farming lobby any favours with the wider public? But maybe that’s just my left-liberal bubble speaking.
Unfortunately THE theme of the times is privileged, prosperous amoral chancers persuading the folk at the bottom that somehow they’re on their side. Clarkson (Repton) and Lloyd Webber (Westminster) aren’t a bad fit for that model. *tugs forelock and taps side of nose at the same time* Look, they’re rich, smart guys, they must know what they’re talking abaht.
When I was doing aa triathlon at Oundle School earlier in the year, someone in the registration queue commented on the rather majestic aircraft hanger-like sports hall. "Better than my old school," I said. "Where did you go?" he asked. "I went to school in Repton. "Oh", he said, "a posho." "No," I replied. "I went to school in Repton, not at Repton. I was at primary school there."
What happened next?
He laughed. And then I got changed and swum 600 metres in their rather excellent 50-metre pool, cycled 25km, and ran 5km around their playing fields. Which annoyingly were not as flat as I hoped.
(Indoor 50-metre pools are quite unusual in the UK; most are 25 metre. I was quite looking forward to swimming in it, but the boom had broken down halfway across, so we ended up swimming in one half of the pool, climbing out, then getting into the other half to continue the swim.)
Until recently Bath Uni had a very rare 49.96 m pool. Long story, short version - they built a pool that was exactly 50 m long and forgot about the tiles...
There are quite a number of 50m pools now - I was surprised when I looked it up.
Wikipedia lists more than 50, and that does not include Oundle or extra-long lidos.
Yeah, but the problem is that there's only 50. Leaving outdoors ones, the nearest to me that is accessible to mere plebs is probably Corby or Hitchin.
There's a 50=metre pool planned to be built in the new Cambridge Eddington development, but whether that happens is another matter. A 25-metre pool was 'planned' for our village as well. After 25 years it's pretty much been forgotten about. Though as Eddington's the university's baby, they'll probably find a way for the council to fund it from the money that could build a smaller pool here...
Something mentioned during the Olympics might complicate the provision of 50 metre pools. Apparently Olympic swimmers have the water several degrees colder than the public likes. This might mean a lot of money is spent on pools longer than needed for the public but too warm for competitive swimmers, or the right length for athletes but too cold for recreational swimmers.
Dan Neidle’s going for it on APR. I suspect his TwiX follower count is taking a hit.
Here’s what he’s just posted on LinkedIn.
The Country Land and Business Association says the new £1m cap on agricultural inheritance tax relief will "harm 70,000 farms". That's 1/3 of all farms.
What does the actual data show? Less than 500 farms/year will pay more tax as a result of this change every year. Possibly as few as 100.
Why 500? Because this table shows only 500 farm estates claimed agricultural property relief (APR) of more than £1m in 2022.
But that overstates the issue. Married couples can easily claim the £1m cap twice. Small farmers without other assets can use their nil rate band. So for a married couple running a farm, it could be worth £2.65m before the restriction on the relief costs them a penny.
That could mean as few as 100 farms per year are affected. And the 20% tax is only on the excess over the threshold, so for most of the 100, the additional tax will be reasonably small. Insure against it when you're young(ish). Give some/all to your kids when you get older.
And the data shows that most of the cost of the tax increase will be borne by a few very large estates. In 2022 2% of agricultural estates - just 37 - claimed an average of £6m.
That's what this is really about - not 70,000 farms. So let's drop the hyperbolic fake stats.
All of which means, of course, that it won’t raise much money either. Whereas BPR…
Neidle is talking bollocks - and of course doing so on behalf of the Labour Party as he sits on their National Constitutional Committee. The idea he is some sort of independent expert is garbage.
Which bit is bollocks? The numbers seem plausible enough and are taken from recent historical data, rather than hypotheticals.
Dan’s analysis on most topics in the last year or so has been pretty objective and usually technically spot on. He also makes use of a large range of tax specialists who prefer to keep out of the limelight when he’s commenting on areas he’s not an expert in. He has both publicly rubbished various allegations of tax avoidance or evasion against Tory MPs, and been extremely critical of the NI changes, so the evidence he’s just spouting Labour propaganda is pretty thin.
Yep, Tyndall is being an arse.
If that is the sum total of your contribution to this debate then probably best if you just admit it and fuck off now.
You are being an arse. Unless you want to actually say why Neidle's claims are wrong and not just call bias?
I already explained why but you are clearly too dumb to understand.
Let me give you one example where he is wrong.
He claims that "Small farmers without other assets can use their nil rate band". Except they can't. If the Estate is worth more than £2 million then the nil rate band tapers off to zero.
In addition the NFU - who should be in a position to know - state that the average farm size is just over 250 acres. That is around £2.5 million in land value alone without equipment. plant, livestock or the house. The average value of a farm business is well over £3 million.
Mind you I am not surprised that he is confused when even the Government can't get their numbers straight.
The Treasury has said 73% of APR claims are below £1 million and so would be unaffected by this policy. However, Defra’s figures show that only 34% of farms are under £1 million net worth.
It might be nice if the Government itself could at least get its figures straight.
Cheers, I'll stop being arse now...
Small seems to be in the eye of the beholder is a < 2 mill farm small, probably... but if 34% are below a million it might be easier to say less than a million is a 'small-farm' . They should easily stay under the threshold with all the allowances in play. But its all semantics, yes?
On the average farm size the UK gov reports it to be ~200 acres this seems to be heavily skewed by high acreage holdings, more than 25% are > 400 acre and a big wedge of those above 1000. Most the farmed UK land is pastoral so £10k an acre is a big assumption its much closer to £7.5k. But yes with all the farming paraphernalia the average farm is probably drawing close to the threshold but the median farm seems unlikely to exceed it.
I don't see where Neidle is talking bollocks.
Farms are quite a bit more than their land value
"average farm size is just over 250 acres."
Should we talking about average rather than median?
There's presumably some tail end landowners with f*ck off size estates here?
Also, 54% of farms are owned, 16% tenanted and the remainder part owned and part tenanted.
Interesting too that more than 50% of agricultural land sales last year were to non-farming owners, so there is a real issue of investment for nonagricultural purposes. I suppose my field would be this, though I do sublet it to a farmer for sheep grazing.
I reckon the Grundys are still OK, maybe the Archers will be bought out by Borsetshire Land.
The left are coming over as extremely "nasty" in their anti-farm comments.
Well, I'm not of the left, but I'm generally sceptical of giving any industry special treatment. And I'm especially sceptical when the special treatment is abused by other groups of people to avoid taxes.
Am I coming over as nasty?
I have no objection to farmers. They are carrying out economic activity, just like shoemakers, bakers, shopkeepers and insurance entrepreneurs.
But I also struggle to see why they should get special treatment.
Which is why I'd suggest replacing inheritance tax with a small annual gross assets levy. You can pass whatever you like onto your children, free of tax, but for people with assets of more than £1m, you need to make an annual payment 0.1% or 0.2% on the excess.
And this would be payable by anyone owning assets in the UK, not just by UK taxpayers. (I.e. tax the asset, not just resident taxpayers.)
It would probably raise almost exactly the same as IHT. It would avoid massive one-off payments. It wouldn't treat different family run businesses differently depending on the industry they were in.
And it wouldn't distort the market by allowing investment managers to buy up farmland solely for the purpose of avoiding IHT.
"After their catastrophic election defeat in July, you might expect to find the Tories fearful about the future. But that’s not the picture revealed by the latest ConservativeHome survey of party members.
An astonishing 38% of those canvassed expect a Conservative majority at the next election — a huge surge of optimism since the immediate aftermath of the party’s landslide defeat, when only 17% expected to win a majority next time. What’s more, this month’s survey shows that a further 18% of members foresee a Conservative-led coalition government and 11% a Conservative minority government. So just a few months after the Labour landslide, most Conservatives expect to be back in power before the end of the decade — which is bold.
I'd like the Tories to be fit for office once more, sooner rather than later.
But so far it seems the idea of many Tories seems to be that Labour will be so repellent that the voters will go back to the Tories immediately with no changes necessary.
What changes do you feel are necessary? Genuinely interested - I also think changes are necessary but I am not sure whether our envisioned changes are aligned.
I think the Conservatives need to look beyond their core votes of pensioners and farmers and see how they can win back lost aspirational voters who go to work for a living.
Quite frankly the worst tax raised in the Budget was not lowering a relief on inheriting farms that didn't even exist when many farmers today inherited the farm themselves, which is relatively small change affecting few people in a small part of the economy.
The worst tax raised in the Budget was the billions taken via Employers NI, especially the vicious combination of both raising the rate and slashing the threshold at which it is paid.
Yet that is not being scrutinised like it should be, by either the Opposition or the media, as the oxygen of publicity is instead going to a niche interest group.
There's a part of me that almost wonders if that was Machiavellian genius by Labour. Do the farm tax as a distraction knowing most people will think "well I'm not a farmer so it doesn't affect me" as a distraction so that people completely ignore wages getting plundered via NI which does affect them. Like a pickpocket causing a distraction to get your attention so they can take what you have.
Except I doubt they're competent enough to be that Machiavellian.
The Tories also opposed the rise in Employers NI and in the latest poll today from JL Partners are just 1% behind Labour on 26% to Labour's 27% and in MoreinCommon's latest poll the Tories are actually ahead on 29% to 27% for Labour.
Starmer Labour is now polling as badly as Foot's Labour did in 1983 while Kemi's Tories are actually slightly up on their worst result of all time in July. It is Reform though really squeezing the Labour vote and that is putting them down and neck and neck with the Tories https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_next_United_Kingdom_general_election
"This is the recorded track of the Yi Peng 3. Notice the variation in the track approximately in the centre of my screenshot. It essentially crosses back and forth over the undersea cable."
It’s hard to take a read on geopolitics for the next few years (assuming we have them…) isn’t it? Putin in bed with China to this extent makes Trump a very unpredictable actor. And he has notably not criticised Biden’s recent move (unless I have missed it).
I can’t read it any more. But we do know Trump won’t stabilise anything. Doomsday clock must have advanced a tick.
I thought that one of Trump's administration appointments, I forget which one, criticised the Biden decision in quite strong terms.
It was Mike Waltz, the incoming National Security Advisor.
Now, Trump isn't consistent. He could easily reverse-ferret, and maybe the China connection would prompt that. Who can say?
Well, if getting rid of exemptions is all the range these days, then let's get rid of the exemptions from VAT: food, books and children's clothes. All those people over-eating, sitting on their arses reading and getting fat - and as for children: all that snot and those germs! Bunch of tax dodgers the lot of them.
And if people complain, well it's to save/worship the NHS and keep train drivers in comfort. So they'll have to suck it up.
Not exemptions that are open to substantial abuse though, unless you count Jaffa cakes
There's always a worryingly large amount of random bits that fall off a spacecraft. The people who get in them are proper mad fuckers.
You clearly never had a lift in a Sea King….
We used to fly in S61s out of Beccles in Suffolk. It was strange to sit there and read the pamphlet realising the helicopter was older than I was. Great choppers though - my favourite of all the various types I have flown in.
Frankly if the Tories are looking to win back votes like mine (well probably not mine at this point but many people like me) they need to get off this protesting stuff and onto actual ideas for anyone under the age of 90.
They might be right on the farms thing - but this is an irrelevant issue to the voters in the centre ground.
I am getting strong Labour 2010-2019 vibes. Please don't go down that path.
Next up, after Jeremy “I bought my farm in order to avoid inheritance tax“ Clarkson; that well known farmer Andrew Lloyd Webber, who definitely hasn’t bought 5,000 acres in order to avoid inheritance tax: https://x.com/Otto_English/status/1858860636609876027
Really not sure leading with these guys is doing the farming lobby any favours with the wider public? But maybe that’s just my left-liberal bubble speaking.
Unfortunately THE theme of the times is privileged, prosperous amoral chancers persuading the folk at the bottom that somehow they’re on their side. Clarkson (Repton) and Lloyd Webber (Westminster) aren’t a bad fit for that model. *tugs forelock and taps side of nose at the same time* Look, they’re rich, smart guys, they must know what they’re talking abaht.
When I was doing aa triathlon at Oundle School earlier in the year, someone in the registration queue commented on the rather majestic aircraft hanger-like sports hall. "Better than my old school," I said. "Where did you go?" he asked. "I went to school in Repton. "Oh", he said, "a posho." "No," I replied. "I went to school in Repton, not at Repton. I was at primary school there."
What happened next?
He laughed. And then I got changed and swum 600 metres in their rather excellent 50-metre pool, cycled 25km, and ran 5km around their playing fields. Which annoyingly were not as flat as I hoped.
(Indoor 50-metre pools are quite unusual in the UK; most are 25 metre. I was quite looking forward to swimming in it, but the boom had broken down halfway across, so we ended up swimming in one half of the pool, climbing out, then getting into the other half to continue the swim.)
Until recently Bath Uni had a very rare 49.96 m pool. Long story, short version - they built a pool that was exactly 50 m long and forgot about the tiles...
Let me guess, someone set British record in the pool and the swimming authorities measured it afterwards?
A hundred years back at a friend's school, some boy knocked 20 seconds off the school mile record, which obviously meant the course was too short or the stopwatch holder missed the start. A decade later he broke the world record at the Olympics. Come on Eilish (pre-Britpop).
Frankly if the Tories are looking to win back votes like mine (well probably not mine at this point but many people like me) they need to get off this protesting stuff and onto actual ideas for anyone under the age of 90.
They might be right on the farms thing - but this is an irrelevant issue to the voters in the centre ground.
I am getting strong Labour 2010-2019 vibes. Please don't go down that path.
Voters in the centre ground need to eat, no farms no food.
Dan Neidle’s going for it on APR. I suspect his TwiX follower count is taking a hit.
Here’s what he’s just posted on LinkedIn.
The Country Land and Business Association says the new £1m cap on agricultural inheritance tax relief will "harm 70,000 farms". That's 1/3 of all farms.
What does the actual data show? Less than 500 farms/year will pay more tax as a result of this change every year. Possibly as few as 100.
Why 500? Because this table shows only 500 farm estates claimed agricultural property relief (APR) of more than £1m in 2022.
But that overstates the issue. Married couples can easily claim the £1m cap twice. Small farmers without other assets can use their nil rate band. So for a married couple running a farm, it could be worth £2.65m before the restriction on the relief costs them a penny.
That could mean as few as 100 farms per year are affected. And the 20% tax is only on the excess over the threshold, so for most of the 100, the additional tax will be reasonably small. Insure against it when you're young(ish). Give some/all to your kids when you get older.
And the data shows that most of the cost of the tax increase will be borne by a few very large estates. In 2022 2% of agricultural estates - just 37 - claimed an average of £6m.
That's what this is really about - not 70,000 farms. So let's drop the hyperbolic fake stats.
All of which means, of course, that it won’t raise much money either. Whereas BPR…
Neidle is talking bollocks - and of course doing so on behalf of the Labour Party as he sits on their National Constitutional Committee. The idea he is some sort of independent expert is garbage.
Which bit is bollocks? The numbers seem plausible enough and are taken from recent historical data, rather than hypotheticals.
Dan’s analysis on most topics in the last year or so has been pretty objective and usually technically spot on. He also makes use of a large range of tax specialists who prefer to keep out of the limelight when he’s commenting on areas he’s not an expert in. He has both publicly rubbished various allegations of tax avoidance or evasion against Tory MPs, and been extremely critical of the NI changes, so the evidence he’s just spouting Labour propaganda is pretty thin.
Yep, Tyndall is being an arse.
If that is the sum total of your contribution to this debate then probably best if you just admit it and fuck off now.
You are being an arse. Unless you want to actually say why Neidle's claims are wrong and not just call bias?
I already explained why but you are clearly too dumb to understand.
Let me give you one example where he is wrong.
He claims that "Small farmers without other assets can use their nil rate band". Except they can't. If the Estate is worth more than £2 million then the nil rate band tapers off to zero.
In addition the NFU - who should be in a position to know - state that the average farm size is just over 250 acres. That is around £2.5 million in land value alone without equipment. plant, livestock or the house. The average value of a farm business is well over £3 million.
Mind you I am not surprised that he is confused when even the Government can't get their numbers straight.
The Treasury has said 73% of APR claims are below £1 million and so would be unaffected by this policy. However, Defra’s figures show that only 34% of farms are under £1 million net worth.
It might be nice if the Government itself could at least get its figures straight.
Cheers, I'll stop being arse now...
Small seems to be in the eye of the beholder is a < 2 mill farm small, probably... but if 34% are below a million it might be easier to say less than a million is a 'small-farm' . They should easily stay under the threshold with all the allowances in play. But its all semantics, yes?
On the average farm size the UK gov reports it to be ~200 acres this seems to be heavily skewed by high acreage holdings, more than 25% are > 400 acre and a big wedge of those above 1000. Most the farmed UK land is pastoral so £10k an acre is a big assumption its much closer to £7.5k. But yes with all the farming paraphernalia the average farm is probably drawing close to the threshold but the median farm seems unlikely to exceed it.
I don't see where Neidle is talking bollocks.
Farms are quite a bit more than their land value
"average farm size is just over 250 acres."
Should we talking about average rather than median?
There's presumably some tail end landowners with f*ck off size estates here?
Also, 54% of farms are owned, 16% tenanted and the remainder part owned and part tenanted.
Interesting too that more than 50% of agricultural land sales last year were to non-farming owners, so there is a real issue of investment for nonagricultural purposes. I suppose my field would be this, though I do sublet it to a farmer for sheep grazing.
I reckon the Grundys are still OK, maybe the Archers will be bought out by Borsetshire Land.
Pretty sure the Grundys are tenant farmers
They're not. They lost their farm when they want bankrupt some years back. Oliver Sterling bought it and let them move back into the farmhouse. They now have "Grundy Field"* a small plot of land they bought when they sold their milk quota, which they use for the cider club and raising the Christmas turkeys. *Definitely not worth enough to qualify for the Tractor Tax
Frankly if the Tories are looking to win back votes like mine (well probably not mine at this point but many people like me) they need to get off this protesting stuff and onto actual ideas for anyone under the age of 90.
They might be right on the farms thing - but this is an irrelevant issue to the voters in the centre ground.
I am getting strong Labour 2010-2019 vibes. Please don't go down that path.
Voters in the centre ground need to eat, no farms no food
This is silly hyperbole HYUFD.
I am in the cohort of voter that a Tory Party could win over if it would like to try. I am not yet picking up any idea that the Tories opposing this policy is a winner. That may change of course,
Mail making it clear that the farmers are led by Clarkson.
Maybe that will help them? I'm not so sure.
Kaleb would be a far better advocate.
I 100% agree, politically I think having Clarkson advocate for this cause was a mistake. It's given SKS a target with which to hit, which I am not sure was entirely wise.
Frankly if the Tories are looking to win back votes like mine (well probably not mine at this point but many people like me) they need to get off this protesting stuff and onto actual ideas for anyone under the age of 90.
They might be right on the farms thing - but this is an irrelevant issue to the voters in the centre ground.
I am getting strong Labour 2010-2019 vibes. Please don't go down that path.
Voters in the centre ground need to eat, no farms no food
This is silly hyperbole HYUFD.
I am in the cohort of voter that a Tory Party could win over if it would like to try. I am not yet picking up any idea that the Tories opposing this policy is a winner. That may change of course,
As I said, 57% of voters oppose the tractor tax, including 56% of voters who switched to Labour in July but voted Conservative in 2019
Is he doing current affairs now in addition to theatre and sex worker reviews?
Amusingly, about a month before that theatre/sex worker review, he was on Guardian blind dates. No spark apparently, bet his date still wakes up in a cold sweat then sighs with relief.
Torsten Bell @TorstenBell · 9h Tax due if parents hand on £3m house: £940k Tax due if parents hand on a £3m farm: £0 A reminder of significant tax advantage to farmers vs everyone else AFTER these changes
===
A real problem for Starmer's version of Labour is they don't understand emotion and its role in politics.
We had the same tin ear with making some pensioners freeze this winter.
They paraded all the numbers and talked about credits and schemes and council support and so on.
Have they learnt absolutely nothing from Trump? The Dems trotter the same arguments out: 'look the best economic numbers in years', 'inflation down to 2%', 'job rates at a high' etc etc.
We let America buy DeepMind, then the world leaders in AI. We need home grown venture capital together with protection of national champions. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_DeepMind
Frankly if the Tories are looking to win back votes like mine (well probably not mine at this point but many people like me) they need to get off this protesting stuff and onto actual ideas for anyone under the age of 90.
They might be right on the farms thing - but this is an irrelevant issue to the voters in the centre ground.
I am getting strong Labour 2010-2019 vibes. Please don't go down that path.
Voters in the centre ground need to eat, no farms no food
This is silly hyperbole HYUFD.
I am in the cohort of voter that a Tory Party could win over if it would like to try. I am not yet picking up any idea that the Tories opposing this policy is a winner. That may change of course,
As I said, 57% of voters oppose the tractor tax, including 56% of voters who switched to Labour in July but voted Conservative in 2019
Frankly if the Tories are looking to win back votes like mine (well probably not mine at this point but many people like me) they need to get off this protesting stuff and onto actual ideas for anyone under the age of 90.
They might be right on the farms thing - but this is an irrelevant issue to the voters in the centre ground.
I am getting strong Labour 2010-2019 vibes. Please don't go down that path.
Voters in the centre ground need to eat, no farms no food
This is silly hyperbole HYUFD.
I am in the cohort of voter that a Tory Party could win over if it would like to try. I am not yet picking up any idea that the Tories opposing this policy is a winner. That may change of course,
As I said, 57% of voters oppose the tractor tax, including 56% of voters who switched to Labour in July but voted Conservative in 2019
The left are coming over as extremely "nasty" in their anti-farm comments.
Well, I'm not of the left, but I'm generally sceptical of giving any industry special treatment. And I'm especially sceptical when the special treatment is abused by other groups of people to avoid taxes.
Am I coming over as nasty?
I have no objection to farmers. They are carrying out economic activity, just like shoemakers, bakers, shopkeepers and insurance entrepreneurs.
But I also struggle to see why they should get special treatment.
Which is why I'd suggest replacing inheritance tax with a small annual gross assets levy. You can pass whatever you like onto your children, free of tax, but for people with assets of more than £1m, you need to make an annual payment 0.1% or 0.2% on the excess.
And this would be payable by anyone owning assets in the UK, not just by UK taxpayers. (I.e. tax the asset, not just resident taxpayers.)
It would probably raise almost exactly the same as IHT. It would avoid massive one-off payments. It wouldn't treat different family run businesses differently depending on the industry they were in.
And it wouldn't distort the market by allowing investment managers to buy up farmland solely for the purpose of avoiding IHT.
I think the difference is that farmers put food on our tables and often it's a pretty thankless andow margin industry. Isn't there a case to be made that having a proper food security reserve is worth a few tax breaks?
Torsten Bell @TorstenBell · 9h Tax due if parents hand on £3m house: £940k Tax due if parents hand on a £3m farm: £0 A reminder of significant tax advantage to farmers vs everyone else AFTER these changes
===
A real problem for Starmer's version of Labour is they don't understand emotion and its role in politics.
We had the same tin ear with making some pensioners freeze this winter.
They paraded all the numbers and talked about credits and schemes and council support and so on.
Have they learnt absolutely nothing from Trump? The Dems trotter the same arguments out: 'look the best economic numbers in years', 'inflation down to 2%', 'job rates at a high' etc etc.
Clarkson and Farage and co understand.
You also can't produce vast amounts of the nation's food from a house unlike farmland
Frankly if the Tories are looking to win back votes like mine (well probably not mine at this point but many people like me) they need to get off this protesting stuff and onto actual ideas for anyone under the age of 90.
They might be right on the farms thing - but this is an irrelevant issue to the voters in the centre ground.
I am getting strong Labour 2010-2019 vibes. Please don't go down that path.
Voters in the centre ground need to eat, no farms no food
This is silly hyperbole HYUFD.
I am in the cohort of voter that a Tory Party could win over if it would like to try. I am not yet picking up any idea that the Tories opposing this policy is a winner. That may change of course,
As I said, 57% of voters oppose the tractor tax, including 56% of voters who switched to Labour in July but voted Conservative in 2019
Questions, questions. Look at the wording. It's so badly written in that tweet it could be read either yes or no.
And the questions aren't direct opposites. The negative one introduces new concepts.
Frankly, whether it's popular or not, I just can't see that this shifts votes alone.
Perhaps as part of a bigger shift it might do but the thing that will end it for SKS is the economy being in a hole or immigration running wild.
Also, Labour has made a decision, they should jolly well stick by it. I am utterly fed up with politicians ducking decisions or rowing back on them when it gets tough, Liz Truss excepted for being a loon.
They will lose a lot of respect from me if they go back on this.
The left are coming over as extremely "nasty" in their anti-farm comments.
Well, I'm not of the left, but I'm generally sceptical of giving any industry special treatment. And I'm especially sceptical when the special treatment is abused by other groups of people to avoid taxes.
Am I coming over as nasty?
I have no objection to farmers. They are carrying out economic activity, just like shoemakers, bakers, shopkeepers and insurance entrepreneurs.
But I also struggle to see why they should get special treatment.
Which is why I'd suggest replacing inheritance tax with a small annual gross assets levy. You can pass whatever you like onto your children, free of tax, but for people with assets of more than £1m, you need to make an annual payment 0.1% or 0.2% on the excess.
And this would be payable by anyone owning assets in the UK, not just by UK taxpayers. (I.e. tax the asset, not just resident taxpayers.)
It would probably raise almost exactly the same as IHT. It would avoid massive one-off payments. It wouldn't treat different family run businesses differently depending on the industry they were in.
And it wouldn't distort the market by allowing investment managers to buy up farmland solely for the purpose of avoiding IHT.
Should be workable for a lot of farms, 2k annual on a £2 million asset would be less than some pay in Council tax.
The new APR IHT rules should be renamed the death lottery, a 95 year old farmer who held onto all land and business assets and died six weeks ago could transfer it all tax free on death. A farmer who dies tomorrow, even suddenly in an accident in their 40s would now attract the new tax on all farm and business assets they own, less whatever new relief available
Frankly if the Tories are looking to win back votes like mine (well probably not mine at this point but many people like me) they need to get off this protesting stuff and onto actual ideas for anyone under the age of 90.
They might be right on the farms thing - but this is an irrelevant issue to the voters in the centre ground.
I am getting strong Labour 2010-2019 vibes. Please don't go down that path.
I'm sorry the Tories aren't going to win the election with votes like yours. They need to win 6 points back from reform and 6-8 points from everyone else. Probably 2 points from the Lib Dems and 4-6 from Labour. They don't need to venture into the far left to get there broadening the party's appeal on the centre right is enough to do it. Sticking up for farmers is a good first step to show small c conservatives who voted Reform that the party does still care about them and their way of life.
Torsten Bell @TorstenBell · 9h Tax due if parents hand on £3m house: £940k Tax due if parents hand on a £3m farm: £0 A reminder of significant tax advantage to farmers vs everyone else AFTER these changes
===
A real problem for Starmer's version of Labour is they don't understand emotion and its role in politics.
We had the same tin ear with making some pensioners freeze this winter.
They paraded all the numbers and talked about credits and schemes and council support and so on.
Have they learnt absolutely nothing from Trump? The Dems trotter the same arguments out: 'look the best economic numbers in years', 'inflation down to 2%', 'job rates at a high' etc etc.
Clarkson and Farage and co understand.
None of them have spotted that if you start raising tax on one group, lots of other groups get twitchy about you coming for them, have they? And the thing about those groups is that many of them voted Labour for a change in July.
Torsten Bell @TorstenBell · 9h Tax due if parents hand on £3m house: £940k Tax due if parents hand on a £3m farm: £0 A reminder of significant tax advantage to farmers vs everyone else AFTER these changes
===
A real problem for Starmer's version of Labour is they don't understand emotion and its role in politics.
We had the same tin ear with making some pensioners freeze this winter.
They paraded all the numbers and talked about credits and schemes and council support and so on.
Have they learnt absolutely nothing from Trump? The Dems trotter the same arguments out: 'look the best economic numbers in years', 'inflation down to 2%', 'job rates at a high' etc etc.
Clarkson and Farage and co understand.
As I said, ultimately if the average voter feels better off in 2029 they'll get re-elected. If they don't, they won't.
At this point I lean 50/50 on this being a one term government.
Frankly if the Tories are looking to win back votes like mine (well probably not mine at this point but many people like me) they need to get off this protesting stuff and onto actual ideas for anyone under the age of 90.
They might be right on the farms thing - but this is an irrelevant issue to the voters in the centre ground.
I am getting strong Labour 2010-2019 vibes. Please don't go down that path.
Voters in the centre ground need to eat, no farms no food.
I'd missed the part about there being no farms and thus no food. At all?
It might be as crass as many other aspects of central government policy, but I'm not _100%_ sure they are outlawing farms. And I say this as part of a broadly farming family.
Frankly if the Tories are looking to win back votes like mine (well probably not mine at this point but many people like me) they need to get off this protesting stuff and onto actual ideas for anyone under the age of 90.
They might be right on the farms thing - but this is an irrelevant issue to the voters in the centre ground.
I am getting strong Labour 2010-2019 vibes. Please don't go down that path.
I'm sorry the Tories aren't going to win the election with votes like yours. They need to win 6 points back from reform and 6-8 points from everyone else. Probably 2 points from the Lib Dems and 4-6 from Labour. They don't need to venture into the far left to get there broadening the party's appeal on the centre right is enough to do it. Sticking up for farmers is a good first step to show small c conservatives who voted Reform that the party does still care about them and their way of life.
I am not "far left" Max and you know it.
The fact that your attitude is that you don't want to try and win votes like mine, people who simply want a bit of action on student fees, building some houses and yes the I word, is disappointing.
Torsten Bell @TorstenBell · 9h Tax due if parents hand on £3m house: £940k Tax due if parents hand on a £3m farm: £0 A reminder of significant tax advantage to farmers vs everyone else AFTER these changes
===
A real problem for Starmer's version of Labour is they don't understand emotion and its role in politics.
We had the same tin ear with making some pensioners freeze this winter.
They paraded all the numbers and talked about credits and schemes and council support and so on.
Have they learnt absolutely nothing from Trump? The Dems trotter the same arguments out: 'look the best economic numbers in years', 'inflation down to 2%', 'job rates at a high' etc etc.
Clarkson and Farage and co understand.
You also can't produce vast amounts of the nation's food from a house unlike farmland
Yup, this is what bothers me about this kind of analysis. Agricultural land and property aren't the same asset class, one is productive and the other is for rent-seeking.
Victoria Derbyshire asks Jeremy Clarkson if he's at the farmers' protest because he bought a farm to avoid inheritance tax
Clarkson: "Classic BBC that, classic... I wanted to shoot, which comes with the benefit of not paying inheritance tax"
I am sure there are differing opinions but as a big fan of Jezza generally, I think he comes across really, really badly here.
He's generally likeable, he comes across worse when employing the kind of tactics politicians would employ, like trying to divert with a bit pf BBC bashing.
Frankly if the Tories are looking to win back votes like mine (well probably not mine at this point but many people like me) they need to get off this protesting stuff and onto actual ideas for anyone under the age of 90.
They might be right on the farms thing - but this is an irrelevant issue to the voters in the centre ground.
I am getting strong Labour 2010-2019 vibes. Please don't go down that path.
I'm sorry the Tories aren't going to win the election with votes like yours. They need to win 6 points back from reform and 6-8 points from everyone else. Probably 2 points from the Lib Dems and 4-6 from Labour. They don't need to venture into the far left to get there broadening the party's appeal on the centre right is enough to do it. Sticking up for farmers is a good first step to show small c conservatives who voted Reform that the party does still care about them and their way of life.
I am not "far left" Max and you know it.
The fact that your attitude is that you don't want to try and win votes like mine, people who simply want a bit of action on student fees, building some houses and yes the I word, is disappointing.
Your voting record suggests otherwise, Corbyn in 2017 and 2019.
Frankly if the Tories are looking to win back votes like mine (well probably not mine at this point but many people like me) they need to get off this protesting stuff and onto actual ideas for anyone under the age of 90.
They might be right on the farms thing - but this is an irrelevant issue to the voters in the centre ground.
I am getting strong Labour 2010-2019 vibes. Please don't go down that path.
Voters in the centre ground need to eat, no farms no food
This is silly hyperbole HYUFD.
I am in the cohort of voter that a Tory Party could win over if it would like to try. I am not yet picking up any idea that the Tories opposing this policy is a winner. That may change of course,
As I said, 57% of voters oppose the tractor tax, including 56% of voters who switched to Labour in July but voted Conservative in 2019
Questions, questions. Look at the wording. It's so badly written in that tweet it could be read either yes or no.
And the questions aren't direct opposites. The negative one introduces new concepts.
Frankly, whether it's popular or not, I just can't see that this shifts votes alone.
Perhaps as part of a bigger shift it might do but the thing that will end it for SKS is the economy being in a hole or immigration running wild.
Also, Labour has made a decision, they should jolly well stick by it. I am utterly fed up with politicians ducking decisions or rowing back on them when it gets tough, Liz Truss excepted for being a loon.
They will lose a lot of respect from me if they go back on this.
I'd be a bit worried if governments with huge majorities are afraid to make decisions (or stick to them when made).
Obviously there will be times when they make the wrong decision, or indeed should reverse a decision, goverments abuse big majorities when they have them, but if they were incapable of even using it that would be a problem of a different kind.
Torsten Bell @TorstenBell · 9h Tax due if parents hand on £3m house: £940k Tax due if parents hand on a £3m farm: £0 A reminder of significant tax advantage to farmers vs everyone else AFTER these changes
===
A real problem for Starmer's version of Labour is they don't understand emotion and its role in politics.
We had the same tin ear with making some pensioners freeze this winter.
They paraded all the numbers and talked about credits and schemes and council support and so on.
Have they learnt absolutely nothing from Trump? The Dems trotter the same arguments out: 'look the best economic numbers in years', 'inflation down to 2%', 'job rates at a high' etc etc.
Clarkson and Farage and co understand.
If you're right, it's deeply depressing.
Labour haven't done anything particularly radical at all in the grand scheme of things. Fuel duty remains frozen, farmers still have IHT allowances, there's been a relatively minor change to employer NICs, Miliband had accelerated Net Zero plans by less than 10% compared with the Tory plan. Nothing on social care, health spending is still increasing at an eye-watering rate. Council tax remains deeply unfair.
This age of outrage is going to stifle the ambitions of any politician. Starmer's lethargy is a product of us as a whole more than anything.
The left are coming over as extremely "nasty" in their anti-farm comments.
Well, I'm not of the left, but I'm generally sceptical of giving any industry special treatment. And I'm especially sceptical when the special treatment is abused by other groups of people to avoid taxes.
Am I coming over as nasty?
I have no objection to farmers. They are carrying out economic activity, just like shoemakers, bakers, shopkeepers and insurance entrepreneurs.
But I also struggle to see why they should get special treatment.
Which is why I'd suggest replacing inheritance tax with a small annual gross assets levy. You can pass whatever you like onto your children, free of tax, but for people with assets of more than £1m, you need to make an annual payment 0.1% or 0.2% on the excess.
And this would be payable by anyone owning assets in the UK, not just by UK taxpayers. (I.e. tax the asset, not just resident taxpayers.)
It would probably raise almost exactly the same as IHT. It would avoid massive one-off payments. It wouldn't treat different family run businesses differently depending on the industry they were in.
And it wouldn't distort the market by allowing investment managers to buy up farmland solely for the purpose of avoiding IHT.
I think the difference is that farmers put food on our tables and often it's a pretty thankless andow margin industry. Isn't there a case to be made that having a proper food security reserve is worth a few tax breaks?
Farming is pretty heavily subsided in other ways, and far more directly than IHT relief.
Perhaps we should do an NZ and abolish all farming subsidies and tarif protections. It made for big improvements to productivity.
Comments
And all going on whilst the Government still refuses to make multinationals pay proper tax or deal with things like workers of pension age paying no NI.
And if people complain, well it's to save/worship the NHS and keep train drivers in comfort. So they'll have to suck it up.
"£325,000 – this is the basic inheritance tax allowance that everyone gets, which still applies.
£175,000 – since 2017, everyone has also been able to take advantage of something called the 'residence nil-rate band', commonly known as the 'main residence' band."
Which is exactly what I said.
https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/family/inheritance-tax-planning-iht/
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/topics/cljev4jz3pjt
Meanwhile the counting continues.
I started to compose a variant of '12 Christmas' for US elections, but we're up to 14 days now.
https://x.com/auonsson/status/1858957024962183631
Denmark has detained a Chinese ship rumoured to be behind the cutting of the undersea cables in the Baltic Sea.
Iraq War - nope
Gaza - nope
Countryside alliance - nope
Brexit protests - nope.
CND marches of the 1960s - nope
Serious question, has any major protest of this kind ever actually got a reversal in a policy? I mean in the UK of course. Some European protests seem to have more success and the CIvil Rights Marches in the US certainly made a difference.
Just as well most of us are pseudononymous.
The fact that you think Neidle is referring to the residential nil rate band is irrelevant. He is referring to what tax people call the “nil rate band” - the band from £0k-£325k. This does not taper off to zero for estates over £2million, so he is entirely correct that farmers still get to apply their nil rate band to their estates, in addition to the £1million (per partner in a couple) threshold that applies to agricultural property. This is how he gets to a total possible relief for a couple of £2.6million - 2 £1million APR thresholds & 2 nil rate bands of £325k.
Woke retains its original definition: being aware of structural inequalities in society, in particular relating to ethnicity and other personal characteristics.
As you were.
Interesting too that more than 50% of agricultural land sales last year were to non-farming owners, so there is a real issue of investment for nonagricultural purposes. I suppose my field would be this, though I do sublet it to a farmer for sheep grazing.
I reckon the Grundys are still OK, maybe the Archers will be bought out by Borsetshire Land.
Confounded you again ain't he?
The fact that you think Neidle is referring to the residential nil rate band is irrelevant. He is referring to what tax people call the “nil rate band” - the band from £0k-£325k. This does not taper off to zero for estates over £2million, so he is entirely correct that farmers still get to apply their nil rate band to their estates, in addition to the £1million (per partner in a couple) threshold that applies to agricultural property. This is how he gets to a total possible relief for a couple of £2.6million - 2 £1million APR thresholds & 2 nil rate bands of £325k.
...
Pb Jan 2020: something something care homes
Pb Nov 2024: faaaaarming
Let us hope not anyway
Sorry, ignore, messed up quotes.
As a country the thing we are sorely lacking is productivity growth. We should welcome companies investing in farmland, merging of farms and aiming to improve output.
We should not welcome rich millionaires buying farmland as a tax loophole / hobby and probably reducing output vs. its potential.
The distortion in farmland prices that arises from that also makes it impossible for genuine farmers or farming companies to expand as the yield on the land cost is too low.
Finally, arguing that there are many tax loopholes so we shouldn't close this one isn't the best argument. We should strive to continue to close loopholes or - even better - change it to an annual wealth tax levy.
Notice the variation in the track approximately in the centre of my screenshot.
It essentially crosses back and forth over the undersea cable."
https://bsky.app/profile/honestcanadian.bsky.social/post/3lbczc4vfq22r
Free school meals - Rashford
Dunno if you'd see them as major?
More than a decade later and Labour is only just now going to apply the second increase to them.
That is surely because of the protests and the anger they were a symptom of.
https://gcaptain.com/details-of-baltic-sea-cable-incident-remain-murky-as-danish-coast-guard-shadows-chinese-vessel/
Maybe that will help them? I'm not so sure.
In 2003 by contrast most voters backed the Iraq War and toppling Saddam, in 2002 most voters wanted hunting foxes with hounds banned, in 2016 most voters voted for Brexit and in 2019 for Boris to deliver it and in the 1960s most voters backed a nuclear deterrent while the Soviet Union had nukes. The Gaza protests are irrelevant as the UK can't control what Israel does anyway.
In 1990 by contrast the poll tax protests were successful as they had voters behind them and Thatcher was toppled by her own party by the end of the year and replaced by John Major who scrapped the poll tax and replaced it with council tax.
The fact most voters and all opposition parties oppose the tractor tax is crucial because on the latest polls Labour likely will lose its majority at the next GE
I did my fair share when I was a student - mostly involving anti-vivisection - but I don't think in reteospect it made much difference except to reassure me there were lots of other people who felt the same way.
And yes I see both your examples as important but perhaps not 'major' in terms of getting people on the streets.
I can’t read it any more. But we do know Trump won’t stabilise anything. Doomsday clock must have advanced a tick.
Am I coming over as nasty?
I have no objection to farmers. They are carrying out economic activity, just like shoemakers, bakers, shopkeepers and insurance entrepreneurs.
But I also struggle to see why they should get special treatment.
Which is why I'd suggest replacing inheritance tax with a small annual gross assets levy. You can pass whatever you like onto your children, free of tax, but for people with assets of more than £1m, you need to make an annual payment 0.1% or 0.2% on the excess.
And this would be payable by anyone owning assets in the UK, not just by UK taxpayers. (I.e. tax the asset, not just resident taxpayers.)
It would probably raise almost exactly the same as IHT. It would avoid massive one-off payments. It wouldn't treat different family run businesses differently depending on the industry they were in.
And it wouldn't distort the market by allowing investment managers to buy up farmland solely for the purpose of avoiding IHT.
Starmer Labour is now polling as badly as Foot's Labour did in 1983 while Kemi's Tories are actually slightly up on their worst result of all time in July. It is Reform though really squeezing the Labour vote and that is putting them down and neck and neck with the Tories
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_for_the_next_United_Kingdom_general_election
And the BBC is accused of being biased.
Could it not just be that SKS was actually telling the truth? Why the implication of bias?
It was Mike Waltz, the incoming National Security Advisor.
Now, Trump isn't consistent. He could easily reverse-ferret, and maybe the China connection would prompt that. Who can say?
They might be right on the farms thing - but this is an irrelevant issue to the voters in the centre ground.
I am getting strong Labour 2010-2019 vibes. Please don't go down that path.
57% of all voters oppose the tractor tax anyway
https://x.com/LukeTryl/status/1858787981303185664
*Definitely not worth enough to qualify for the Tractor Tax
I am in the cohort of voter that a Tory Party could win over if it would like to try. I am not yet picking up any idea that the Tories opposing this policy is a winner. That may change of course,
Victoria Derbyshire asks Jeremy Clarkson if he's at the farmers' protest because he bought a farm to avoid inheritance tax
Clarkson: "Classic BBC that, classic... I wanted to shoot, which comes with the benefit of not paying inheritance tax"
I am sure there are differing opinions but as a big fan of Jezza generally, I think he comes across really, really badly here.
https://x.com/LukeTryl/status/1858787981303185664
Amusingly, about a month before that theatre/sex worker review, he was on Guardian blind dates. No spark apparently, bet his date still wakes up in a cold sweat then sighs with relief.
Torsten Bell
@TorstenBell
·
9h
Tax due if parents hand on £3m house: £940k
Tax due if parents hand on a £3m farm: £0
A reminder of significant tax advantage to farmers vs everyone else AFTER these changes
===
A real problem for Starmer's version of Labour is they don't understand emotion and its role in politics.
We had the same tin ear with making some pensioners freeze this winter.
They paraded all the numbers and talked about credits and schemes and council support and so on.
Have they learnt absolutely nothing from Trump? The Dems trotter the same arguments out: 'look the best economic numbers in years', 'inflation down to 2%', 'job rates at a high' etc etc.
Clarkson and Farage and co understand.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_DeepMind
And the questions aren't direct opposites. The negative one introduces new concepts.
Perhaps as part of a bigger shift it might do but the thing that will end it for SKS is the economy being in a hole or immigration running wild.
Also, Labour has made a decision, they should jolly well stick by it. I am utterly fed up with politicians ducking decisions or rowing back on them when it gets tough, Liz Truss excepted for being a loon.
They will lose a lot of respect from me if they go back on this.
The new APR IHT rules should be renamed the death lottery, a 95 year old farmer who held onto all land and business assets and died six weeks ago could transfer it all tax free on death. A farmer who dies tomorrow, even suddenly in an accident in their 40s would now attract the new tax on all farm and business assets they own, less whatever new relief available
At this point I lean 50/50 on this being a one term government.
It might be as crass as many other aspects of central government policy, but I'm not _100%_ sure they are outlawing farms. And I say this as part of a broadly farming family.
The fact that your attitude is that you don't want to try and win votes like mine, people who simply want a bit of action on student fees, building some houses and yes the I word, is disappointing.
Obviously there will be times when they make the wrong decision, or indeed should reverse a decision, goverments abuse big majorities when they have them, but if they were incapable of even using it that would be a problem of a different kind.
But they'd have to give up their NIMBY obsession.
Labour haven't done anything particularly radical at all in the grand scheme of things. Fuel duty remains frozen, farmers still have IHT allowances, there's been a relatively minor change to employer NICs, Miliband had accelerated Net Zero plans by less than 10% compared with the Tory plan. Nothing on social care, health spending is still increasing at an eye-watering rate. Council tax remains deeply unfair.
This age of outrage is going to stifle the ambitions of any politician. Starmer's lethargy is a product of us as a whole more than anything.
Perhaps we should do an NZ and abolish all farming subsidies and tarif protections. It made for big improvements to productivity.
https://www.cato.org/blog/new-zealands-free-market-farming#:~:text=Facing high budget deficits in,model of market-based farming.