Farmers Have Hoarded Land For Too Long. Inheritance Tax Will Bring New Life To Rural Britain

18th November 2024

In yesterdays Sunday Observer (Soon to be the Sunday Guardian) Will Hutton wrote about the changes to Inheritance tax and farming.

Prices and rents will fall under Rachel Reeves' plans, enabling a younger generation with new ideas to enter the field.

Half a million people die every year. Under the reforms to inheritance tax relief on agricultural land proposed in the budget, about 500 individuals who inherit land worth more than £2m (£3m if they were married to the deceased) will join the rest of society and have inheritance tax levied on their bequest - albeit at half the rate, with an enlarged exemption and 10 years to pay it, concessions not made to the rest of us. How fortunate and privileged are they?

Rarely have 500 very privileged people got so hysterical - and commanded so much attention.

There is no acknowledgment of the potential wider benefits that go beyond the non-trivial contribution the tax will make to relieving the crisis in public services.

The Lib Dem leader, Ed Davey, calling for the government to suspend the measure, forgets Gladstone's succession duty, William Harcourt's introduction of estates duty in 1894 and David Lloyd George's imaginative plans to break up the monopoly of land ownership. Yet, while the non-royal dukes might no longer have automatic membership of the House of Lords, they still own as much of Britain as they did then.

The hoarding of land that has gone on since the bung was introduced by Margaret Thatcher in 1984, which has so steadily driven up land prices and farmers' rents, will at last be checked as some of the larger estates are obliged to sell parcels of land to pay inheritance tax, as they did before 1984 without the world falling in, rather than be enabled to own it in perpetuity.

Inheritance tax springs from the universally held belief that society has the right to share when wealth is transferred on death as a matter of justice. This is not confiscation, especially if the lion’s share of the bequest is left intact. It is asking for a share. The principle should apply to all estates and to everyone. It is fair. It limits the entrenchment of wealth and privilege. It breaks up monopoly, especially of land. It enlarges the tax base. It gives the next generation a chance. Any other argument is the special pleading of plutocrats - and should be seen as such.

Read the full article HERE