Subject: The Laird in his counting house.
For my own mental health I have to continue to issue blogs to gain some sense of my reality. The claims and counter claims by the farmers, politicians, media operatives and the general run of disrupters who flood our minds with fabricated truth regarding for-instance the ability of farmers to pay a tax on the inheritance when a farm is passed on to a son or daughter and the advantages of a continuance of keeping the farm running within the family is threatened. To be persuaded that, the removal of the winter fuel allowance removal and making private schools pay VAT like the rest of us, the Labour Party have a challenging task to persuade us that when they came into power the nations coffers are almost empty and the Tories plan to greatly reduce public services was well on its way to completion.
It’s a long tradition that farming is largely an issue of inheritance rather than a traditional business of selling the farm and equipment on the death of the owner. What is remarkable having listened each year to their life of increasing costs and tight margins they any parent would wish to bequeath the dead hand of a farm onto one of their children. There seems to be a romance in the ownership of land much as there is in the ownership of house, a sort of status signal, akin to the Manor House in feudal times. Our home is our castle in which its ownership to some extent insulates when we close the door.
Farming is a clique and offers status and so when it is suggested that a reduce rate of inheritance tax should be paid tax as part of the revenue required to run the country, everything kicks off. Not only is the tax levied, only on an estate worth more than £1million (for me I pay inheritance tax on anything above £350 ) going up to £3 million for ‘ a couple’ they are granted 10 years to pay the tax off whilst the beneficiaries of of my estate have to cough-up in a few months
If there was a clique to describe plumbers and electricians who had grown their business to be valued the same amount, no one in society would claim they need exception from the tax. The farmers like the rest of us use the NHS and the schools, they rely on the armed forces to protect them from invasion, they depend on the infrastructure of the country but want to cry foul when asked to pay what others accept as their collective burden.
As with most things there are trade offs to consider. The strategic place of food in our domestic requirement, the reduction in the number of farms producing that food and the cost of having to buy in food from overseas, plus the choke-hold of foreign interests if we rely on importation has to be considered.
There is already a drastic withering away of ‘productive land’ by wealthy people buying land to included it as part of their business portfolio with generous allowances.
Jeremy Clarkson who stands with his plebeian beanie claiming that the tax is unfair but forgets to mention that he invested 4 million of his wealth into a farm 3 years ago to benefit from its preferential taxation
It’s a long tradition that farming is largely an issue of inheritance rather than a traditional business of selling the farm and equipment on the death of the owner. What is remarkable having listened each year to their life of increasing costs and tight margins they any parent would wish to bequeath the dead hand of a farm onto one of their children. There seems to be a romance in the ownership of land much as there is in the ownership of house, a sort of status signal, akin to the Manor House in feudal times. Our home is our castle in which its ownership to some extent insulates when we close the door.
Farming is a clique and offers status and so when it is suggested that a reduce rate of inheritance tax should be paid tax as part of the revenue required to run the country, everything kicks off. Not only is the tax levied, only on an estate worth more than £1million (for me I pay inheritance tax on anything above £350 ) going up to £3 million for ‘ a couple’ they are granted 10 years to pay the tax off whilst the beneficiaries of of my estate have to cough-up in a few months
If there was a clique to describe plumbers and electricians who had grown their business to be valued the same amount, no one in society would claim they need exception from the tax. The farmers like the rest of us use the NHS and the schools, they rely on the armed forces to protect them from invasion, they depend on the infrastructure of the country but want to cry foul when asked to pay what others accept as their collective burden.
As with most things there are trade offs to consider. The strategic place of food in our domestic requirement, the reduction in the number of farms producing that food and the cost of having to buy in food from overseas, plus the choke-hold of foreign interests if we rely on importation has to be considered.
There is already a drastic withering away of ‘productive land’ by wealthy people buying land to included it as part of their business portfolio with generous allowances.
Jeremy Clarkson who stands with his plebeian beanie claiming that the tax is unfair but forgets to mention that he invested 4 million of his wealth into a farm 3 years ago to benefit from its preferential taxation
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