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
If you're going to put a sliding scale on it - then I'd suggest doing it based on size of farm; or percentage of income that relates to farming in the tax returns.
for some back of an envelope maths:
IF you've called Joe Smith, with a 120 acre farm that's been in your family for several generations, and gives you a farming income of £15k pa, which amounts to 80% of your (declared) income - then you are exactly the sort of person who SHOULD be handing the farm on to your kids.
IF you're called James Dyson, with a 36,000 acre farm (or at least, 36,000 acres spread over multiple locations), and gives you a farming income of £4,500k pa, which amounts to 6% of your (declared) income - then you are exactly the sort of person who should be paying inheritance tax instead.
So take the average farm size (IIRC about 200 acres) - farms smaller than that can be handed on; farms double that pay half, farms triple pay full-wack.
Alt. if farming accounts for >75% of your income, you can hand the farm on. 60-75% pays half, <60% pays full-wack.
Of course, there's also the age-old way for landowners to avoid inheritance tax (let's face it, they've been doing it since there was such a thing as inheritance tax) of handing it over to your children when they're in their prime, and you really ought to have 7+ years to live. TBH, this should be the case even more the last few decades of life expectancy in the 80s, rather than 60s. If you're keeping the farm until you die, there's a decent chance that your kids will be retiring before they inherit.
Hit 60-65 years old, give the farm to your kids - stay on in an advisory role with as much hands-on as everyone wants.
Of course, the other argument I hear a lot of (anectode warning) is "farming's hard, and my kids don't WANT to take over the farm" - in which case, why on earth do you think they have a right to avoid inheritance tax? The purpose of the exemption is to keep it in the family because the family wants to continue being farmers.
And finally, farmer's lose out (from me) by continuing to hero-worship Nigel Garage who caused the bulk of this mess in the first place - and is almost certainly one of the "farmer"s for whom the entire exercise is a tax-dodge.
ETA:
Looks like the 200 acre average I used above is the mean, the median is about 1/4 of that.
