Here is the News.

So the hypothetical situation we're discussing is that the farm land, buildings and equipment is worth say £3.5m, yet the owners are actually very poor and have no cash each month? And therefore when the farmer & wife/husband leave the farm to the son or daughter, the son or daughter will be unable to pay the inheritance tax of 40% on the £500K that is above the threshold? Have I got that about right?

It's 20% rate proposed payable over 10 years I think?

Yeah 20% over 10 years.

Obviously this is all made up figures, all cases will be different, We have farmers who make good money and others who barely make minimum wage.

There will also be ways round it, boom times for tax advisors. I'm sure that is everyone's hoped for outcome.

The full anti avoidance rules aren't out yet, I think there is a consultation in the new year.

So 20% of 500,000 is 100,000. Over 10 years is 10,000 a year. Surely if the farm is worth £3.5m this person can afford that? I mean, fuck sake, sell it and put the £3.5m in investments and live of the proceeds comfortably the rest of your life no?

All I've seen so far is rich people getting pissed off that they have to pay tax on things that the rest of us already do. And a better rate than we do.

I'd like some examples of where this is actually a bad thing and people are genuinely going to struggle. What are the numbers for these cases if they exist?

Presumably who won't be effected by this.

This is a good, if long, explanation.

Then who grows the food?

From the viewpoint of the hypothetical situation we've just discussed, who gives a fuck. You've a young farmer who can put £3.5m in his bank and never work again OR he can earn almost nothing after costs (I'm told), be poor the rest of his life (I'm told), and pay the Government £10,000 a year for 10 years (I'm told).

As I said, happy for someone to give me some numbers and examples to show me I'm wrong, but from what I've read this removal of IHT relief is only going to effect very rich people. Isn't that what we've been wanting for the last two decades? To tax the rich more? (Accepting yes, there's plenty more people that also need this principal applying to).

Reducing tax avoidance is good. And I think the rules can be tweaked to target that mor effectively but the principle is solid. It also, with a bit of squinting, gives smaller farms a small advantage compared to larger ones for a change.
And yes, it can be a tough lonely lifestyle, especially with the extra pressure for owner-farmers. Proper social and economic support should not preclude equitable taxation.
Spent junior years in rural Somerset and my uncle owned a dairy farm which he sold for a shitload on retirement because my cousins had no interest in that life.

We've got an obesity epidemic, we don't need food.

I don’t know the details of all this farmy nonsense and I am electing not to dig in and attempt informed opinions.

I am curious, mind, as to how an asset can be valued at 3.5m (or whatever) if it can’t chuck off a net income sufficient to pay a 10k p/a tax charge. How the fuck are they valuing it if it can’t? And are farms currently, perhaps, massively overvalued because IHT exemptions make them so? It being often the case that such things end up capitalised into asset prices… something that, of course, really pisses off the wrong sort of people… are they all marching because they don’t want their kids to be taxed? Or are they pissed that their own investments (which they don’t give a shit about actually farming) are going to take a hit.

I have sympathy with people who inherit something they can’t actually afford to keep, but in a world where minimum wage earners are taxed and benefit withdrawal rates can be 80% or more… not a lot of sympathy.

Also, the quaint idea of all the food coming from indie farms instead of industrialised food production is nice n’all.. but I’d like to know how we decide which few billion people starve to death to make it happen.

All of the above.

Here's a video summary of the changes and the likely number of people who it will impact:

www.instagram.com/share/reel/BALeO50N7c

I think it is exactly this, and the issue with the new rules is that they don't solve this, the rich will still put £1m into farmland and rent it to a farmer and get the relief so the prices remain high.

The super rich also may well think 20% isn't too bad and keep the price high.

The ones who actually farm on medium sized farms will be the ones hit proportionally. Taxing them won't impact on land prices hardly at all.

I think it may be a good strategy if you are rich to look around the death notices for farmers names, talk to their families and offer to buy land off them to pay any iht and rent it straight back to them (the rental income can be low as that's secondary). That way we can get more land into the hands of the rich. Hoorah.

This is why I think Dan niedle's solution seems sensible, have a run off period (of many years - maybe 10) where if inheritors sell it they pay iht on it, whatever the size of the holding. That way the people who buy land to hold for IHT reliefs get caught when the kids sell to get their hands on the money.

I think that is Dan Niedle who's article I linked for you. You should read it if you are interested in this, it is long, but very good.

I started to, honestly, got maybe 7 paragraphs in then had to go make dinner. His analysis seems sensible and suggestions too.