Should multimillionaire landowners benefit from a tax break designed to help small family farms pass down their land to their children? This is a hotly contested question, given last week’s budget. Labour has reintroduced 20% inheritance tax for farms that are valued at more than £1m, meaning the children of farmers will no longer inherit land tax-free. Granted, 20% is still only half of the standard inheritance tax rate, and it probably sounds more than generous to an ex-miner, foundry worker or shipbuilder. But today, £1m would only buy you about 40 hectares (100 acres) of farmland, which is far short of a viable farm.
Farming is a long-term business that requires substantial assets and often makes only meagre returns. Farming families have not had to consider tax planning for family succession since 1992. As a second-generation farmer, I support much of the budget. But on the inheritance tax threshold, I thought, the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, had got it wrong. The positive reading of her decision is that she was trying to close a loophole whereby wealthy people buy up farmland and pass it, tax-free, to their children. If that was the main objective, though, the threshold should have been set substantially higher than £1m.
