Here is the News.

Can you explain this a bit? What's their situation?

Genuinely interested in how big their farms are.

The balance has to be found between family farmers and extreme landowners and I don't have the knowledge really of where that balance sits. There appears to be around 20 Dukes who have owned ridiculous estates basically since William the Bastard handed out land to his mercenary invasion force, go after them and the people like Clarkson, Dyson and Bamford who bought land to avoid tax, and use the break up to empower small farmers who we will need to feed the country in a very different way to the last 50 years. There is a good piece on Unherd by James Rebanks, who seems to understand both the farming traditions and the need to evolve.

I think a reform is right, at the moment landowners who rent out their land for farming or share farm qualify. It should only be for actual farmers.

Also there could be some sort of tapering of relief down to zero.

I think a sensible approach would be on acreage, which may differ depending on the type of farm and location (e.g. more for hill farmers?). Others would know better than me the size of a sustainable farm, 300 or 400 acres?

At the moment Giles who has a country house and rents out 60 acres to the local farmer gets relief, but the farmer actually farming 250 acres probably won't. That is patently ridiculous.

The measure imposed is too blunt.

Like many other forms of tax unfortunately.

As soon as you start introducing exceptions and allowances, you also introduce loopholes.

60% of farms in England are below 123 acres so it's smaller than you think.

But, 20 dukes own over a million acres between them and have done for hundreds of years without ever paying tax on it.

Over half a million acres of land in England is dedicated to shooting grouse (much more in Scotland).

Guy Shrubshole is very good on this stuff.

I wouldn't think anything that small is a viable working farm (I suppose pig and chicken intensive farms maybe). I would guess at least twice that size.

They sound more like small holdings and hobby farms (people with big houses and land) who would be ok with the £1m anyway.

On top of the farm size you have the equipment, livestock, crops.

But part of the point of these conversations is that large, industrialised, intensive farming is not viable in a post fossil fuel world and has overseen massive destruction of nature and wildlife while it has been operating, so we need to move to models where small farms worked by considerably more human hands (and animal legs) are viable.

1 is about 150 acres, dairy, they get a fair living as they supply the Stilton dairies as a collective so get about double the going rate per litre. The senior is pretty old now, the son runs it. Got a big farm house and several farm buildings so there's a lot of value in that before you get into the land and plant.

Another is arable, similar father son arrangement although not quite as old so I assume scope to.move to a trust, rent about 200, own about 100, farmhouse is near a village so farm has distorted value. No issue about taxing the fuck out of it if they were to sell but as farm I don't see how the lad would pay the IH if his dad died.

Is he definitely going to be liable for paying it? How much if so? If it's profitable, I presume you could get a loan out to pay the IHT if there even was a bill?

If the son is working on the farm then why isn't the father taking steps to ensure that he has an ownership share in it now while they're both here?

I assume following the budget they will now but I suppose as the lad is relatively young - under 30 - it isn't an immediate priority. Succsession would of previously been covered in the will.