Chris Bennett @CBennettFarm

@DefraGovUK cutting it fine. Will it be in our Christmas stockings, or is it a treat for @oxfordfarming ?

Cameron's prize money plans really hit everyone in the feels 💔 #BBUK

@Chris4Patches @BibbeysWildFarm @EmmaforWycombe @NFFNUK @LinesMartin @TonyJuniper @BeccyRSPB @No1FarmerJake @RSPBHopeFarm @DrDavidGK @curlewcalls @FergusHenderso1 @MrValley1 Flower margins for #Bees and #Butterflies all removed here.

The Budget inheritance tax changes raised £500m/year, but hit small/businesses unfairly. And also allowed much IHT avoidance to continue A new proposal does the impossible: protects small farms/businesses, hits avoidance, AND raises twice as much revenue. How? 🧵:

At today's press conference, @beverleyturner asked President Trump how important farmers were to him amid the backdrop of the UK changes to inheritance taxes. Thank you for backing your farmers, Mr President. We need our government to do the same and #StopTheFamilyFarmTax. Watch full clip from 1:08:35👉youtube.com/watch?v=O1jOi7…

🗣️ "The organisers of the first London protest have agreed a provisional date with the Met Police for further protest action, should it be needed." READ MORE: ow.ly/oBnX50WuVH9

A stunning claim from the Treasury’s Family Farm Tax impact assessment. They say it will have “no significant impact” on family life. Have the treasury spoken to a single farmer? It is already causing a huge amount of stress and anxiety amongst our hardworking farming families

@arunadvaniecon, in your excellent EFRA committee session with @amcarmichaelMP you said you would be doing some modelling of the affordability of the IHT changes (see below timestamp for this part). Have you released the conclusions from this? parliamentlive.tv/event/index/7b…

Appearing before the EFRA Select Committee chaired by @amcarmichaelMP, the Secretary of State Steve Reed repeated Minister Daniel Zeichner's misstatement that under the new IHT proposal farmers will pay half the rate of other businesses, implying farmers have a favourable deal other businesses do not. This is not true. Under the Treasury proposal, all qualifying businesses and farms will be restricted to 50% relief above £1m. Will Mr Reed do the Committee the courtesy of issuing an apology and correction? Or better, will he push the Treasury to consult on improving the proposal for all businesses?

Stuart @StuartMaggs

a year ago

Daniel Zeichner on Farming Today says that farms will pay IHT at half the rate of all other businesses. That’s just wrong. The new rates apply equally to all businesses, not just farms! When the farming minister doesn’t know his own Government’s policy there’s a problem.

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To those people who say "just pay your taxes", here are some worked examples to show why @UKLabour's Family Farm Tax is literally unaffordable for so many businesses & why they face obliteration in the event they have to pay. A 🧵

Joe Stanley @JoeWStanley

a year ago

Yes, it’s the Express. But I’ve had enough conversations to know there is a real & present danger of a spate of human tragedies occuring before the start of the next tax year. The Prime Minister & Chancellor have been made aware. This isn’t what tax policy is supposed to do.

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Failure of the new rule on urea usage IMO. People out there now putting urea on to beat the 1st April date despite dry and warm forecast and applying N well ahead of crop demand. Whereas it would be much better for the environment to wait and apply it in April before a good rain.

Mark Tucker @MrAgrologist

a year ago

NB urea applied in the recent dry weather and morning dews will have potentially lost high levels of nitrogen as ammonia - a good reason to monitor crops as the season progresses to ensure they are not facing sub optimal N supply - the #YaraNTester can be useful for just that.

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“If you care, care now, not ten years in the future when it’s all gone. We need your support now”. Making no apologies for how cutting and clear my commentary is. @DefraGovUK @SteveReedMP @RachelReevesMP @Keir_Starmer do the right thing. You are ruining our country.

Refresher and update on changes to APR/BPR for inheritance tax The changes proposed to APR & BPR will raise around £200m a year from farming by 2028/29, suggested Dan Neidle of Tax Policy Associates on Saturday, with another £300m or so from other family businesses, and from IHT avoidance schemes. This seems the right sort of ballpark to me. Rumour suggests that this draft policy was kicking around the Treasury for a while with no real political appetite for it. But with support from Arun Advani of CenTax, it was picked up by Rachel Reeves and announced in her Budget. Initially we were told this was about preventing tax avoidance, but then the PM explained to the Parliamentary Oversight Committee that it had no such underlying policy - it was just a money raiser. Nobody had done an impact assessment before introducing the policy to understand whether it might in fact severely damage critical industries. If they had, they would have found out that paring back APR and BPR threatens continuation of family businesses who have to find 20% or so of their value every generation to pay in tax. This jeopardises investment, growth and employment within those businesses. Ministers took the unusual step of recommending that people take tax planning advice to mitigate the impact. However elderly and infirm business owners, and those with limited income, may not have time or may not be able to plan to protect their business. In particular, analysis shows that even if a typical family farm used its entire income for a decade it still wouldn’t be able to afford the proposed tax without selling land. Partly, this is because food production has very tight margin. Partly because there are many pressures on land – development, renewables, food production, environmental benefits – and so land values are much higher than you might expect using normal earnings multipliers. Regardless, farmers and their advisors were shocked to see an unaffordable tax charge being proposed that would cripple their business following a death. Tax experts explained that, luckily, the Treasury could avoid most negative impacts without significantly reducing the tax take by slightly retargeting the proposal. Ideas have been suggested like reducing the relief but adding a clawback arrangement, so that tax falls due when assets are sold, not on death. That would protect growth, investment and productivity across the OMB sector, all of which are at the heart of the Chancellor’s agenda. Disappointingly the Treasury flatly refused to consult on improvements. As a result, farmers have been protesting since the Budget, trying to convey that this proposal severely threatens the future of their business. On Tuesday 18th February the NFU and others are finally meeting with Minister James Murray (who gave the keynote speech at the launch of CenTax in November 2024) to try to persuade him that a shift in implementation of this policy is in everyone’s interest. Given his link to CenTax and its support for this policy, I am not confident of their success, but the meeting is a positive step. I remain hopeful that common sense and pragmatism can triumph over ideology.

WHAT A BEAUTIFUL SIGHT! ❤️ 🚜 📸 @EdwardMorelloWD

There is still something really odd about the #FamilyFarmTax IHT raid; there is virtually nothing about the proposals that make any sense whatsoever. 1/12

The government is spinning that they are offering a record level of support for British farming This is CATEGORICALLY UNTRUE I’m not sure they understand this point… Let me explain…

@StuartMaggs So here's an alternative. 1. raise the cap dramatically (say to £20m) so that only the largest and most sophisticated farm businesses become subject to IHT (which they can fund through finance or selling part of the business)

Farmers' inheritance tax could affect five times more farms than Treasury said, analysis finds news.sky.com/story/farmers-…

Just cancelled our #SewageSludge. To be honest, I don’t like letting anyone down, but I think it’s a better protest than blocking roads or upsetting the public. Maybe Sir Kier will smell the dissatisfaction with this stinky tax policy….

The government is working off the wrong figures, here’s why👉 nfuonline.com/updates-and-in… #StopTheFamilyFarmTax