A Political Thread pt. 2

[Saintjay]

Oh I'm sure some do, but when you have Farage leading their marches who's ****** em more than anyone else.

Farage would attend the opening of an envelope if he thought it would get him press. As far am I'm aware Ed Davey was on this one and he's definitely not right wing yet he won't make the headlines.

 

[ncurd]

TBF Clarkson has done a lot to promote farming in this country. Clarkson's Farm is great.

He however a complete nitwit who supports the Tories despite thinking Brexit is a **** idea.

 

[Reiser99]

Aren't farmers basically business owners now anyway. Long gone are the days of farming being a low class job. They might try to act like they off the people, but I imagine many do a lot better than the majority of people.

 

[ncurd]

Farage would attend the opening of an envelope if he thought it would get him press. As far am I'm aware Ed Davey was on this one and he's definitely not right wing yet he won't make the headlines.

Last I checked Ed Davey didn't campaign to have thier EU subsidies removed.

 

[Saintjay]

Aren't farmers basically business owners now anyway. Long gone are the days of farming being a low class job. They might try to act like they off the people, but I imagine many do a lot better than the majority of people.

Farms have always been businesses. Depends on your definition of farmer i guess. Plenty of people own farms or companies do but they aren't necessarily farmers.

Lots of farming is skilled work not really a low class job. It's not like there using an ox and plow now days. You also then have farm hands, managers, sheppards, fruit pickers and god knows what else.

A lot of the issues stems from allowing people and companies to buy large chunks of land to sit on, probably make money and then pass on without inheritance tax. I think it said today 40% of farm land sold last year wasn't to farmers more to people trying to avoid tax.

 

[Ragey Erasmus]

 

[TRF_Olyy]

Saw someone suggest a good idea: rather than a flat inheritance tax have a sliding scale of inheritance sales tax
If you inherit the property/assets/land and sell straight away you pay full whack, give it a few years a bit less, a few more a bit less etc.

Tarquin who wants to sell daddy's paddocks to fund his new extension pays IHT, but the asset-rich-cash-poor family who want to continue farming the land their family have farmed for generations end up just passing it down and continue to do so

Admit I am a bit biased though as I'm not overly keen on inheritance tax, and I grew up working summer jobs on farms so have had a taste of what life is like for small farmers

 

[Kiwiwomble]

TBF Clarkson has done a lot to promote farming in this country. Clarkson's Farm is great.

He however a complete nitwit who supports the Tories despite thinking Brexit is a **** idea.

yeah, Clarksons farm was really interesting and even if you write off his farm (because he didnt know what he was doing, had several side projects etc) he did gove a voice to the farmer of the area and they all seemed to be struggling

 

[Ragey Erasmus]

Saw someone suggest a good idea: rather than a flat inheritance tax have a sliding scale of inheritance sales tax
If you inherit the property/assets/land and sell straight away you pay full whack, give it a few years a bit less, a few more a bit less etc.

Tarquin who wants to sell daddy's paddocks to fund his new extension pays IHT, but the asset-rich-cash-poor family who want to continue farming the land their family have farmed for generations end up just passing it down and continue to do so

Admit I am a bit biased though as I'm not overly keen on inheritance tax, and I grew up working summer jobs on farms so have had a taste of what life is like for small farmers

Whilst nice in theory, the more complex things get, the more loopholes they have, the more costly they are to implement etc etc. I imagine it causing more problems in the attempt to fix one.

Farms are businesses and the contents of an owned business can count towards the estate of an individual. I'm not all that clued up on the law surrounding this but it seems that the land a farmer owns is essentially an asset with value that they could potentially realise at any point by selling to a developer. How would this differ to simply owning a plot of empty land that you could also sell or a property you could sell?

As Clarkson himself admitted, him buying the farm is in part a tax dodge. He pays lots of money for the farm, that money is all then excluded from inheritance tax, his offspring then aren't interested in continuing the farm, sell it and essentially have inherited all the wealth without paying inheritance tax, meanwhile people with less will pay inheritance tax, especially if things like house prices continue to rise, pushing them into that threshold.