UK Politics now

Where's Labours growth here?

www.itv.com/news/2024-11-13/post-office-confirms-115-branches-could-close-and-hundreds-of-jobs-at-risk


www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/midlands-news/full-statement-homebase-enters-administration-30366751?utm_source=linkCopy&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=sharebar

Another pension inheritance tax.

www.telegraph.co.uk/money/tax/inheritance/how-dodge-rachel-reeves-inheritance-tax-raid-pensions/

It won’t have to be heat pumps, just a non-gas alternative.

Someone built a whole estate near here with gas boilers. It lies empty - because there is no gas in the village!

The govt has singled out farmers who have been avoiding inheritance tax for decades. Even BBC Verify has said that only about 200 farms will need to pay this. The Office for Fiscal Studies has also confirmed this.

Farmers have been getting a much better deal than other family businesses for years and the likes of Clarkson turning up doesn't help their cause. He said himself he bought the land to avoid inheritance tax, then he said he bought it to go shooting but he didn't think that will go down well with the public, yesterday he acknowledged that he has set up a trust to avoid inheritance tax anyway.

All farmers can do this, or they can pass on the farm at least 7 years before they die, which most do. Alternatively they can sell he farm to their children at a knock down price seven years before they die. Most farmers pass the farm on when their children are about 30, it's been standard practice for years - at least 50 years. They were doing this when I was still at school.

This tax is aimed at the investment farmers and those other wealthy people attempting to avoid inheritance tax.

Once you set aside the spousal allowance, the residential assets allowance and other fixed assets on a farm, by far and away the average farm will not have to pay this tax and even if they do they will only be paying at a rate of 20% which is much lower than a family butcher for instance. They will also get 10 years to pay it back.

A number of farmers now are part of a machinery cooperative, where the group buys a combine or crop sprayer between them, so those assets wouldn't be included either.

When you find out that people like Andrew Lloyd-Webber has owned a farm for 40 years and turned up at the protest, you get the idea of where the govt is aiming this change in tax status.

Farmers per se are not being singled out, the investment farmers avoiding tax are.

There are many farmers who don't agree with the protests and do understand why this tax has been brought in because they have seen the effect of these investment farmers buying good quality farm land and not farming it, but getting grants to set it aside or plant woodlands. This is artificially pushing up the cost of farm land because it is being seen as a lucrative tax avoidance scheme. In some parts of the country this more than anything else is stopping farmers buy extra land for their own children to continue farming.

This is not even a very nuanced argument, the likes of Clarkson and Lloyd-Webber know exactly what they've been doing and they have brought this on themselves.

This to will pass Maris. However, I do wonder if Clarkson will write an article complaining about protestors holding up London again, as he has done in the past!

More woe on the way.

www.independent.co.uk/news/business/comment/borrowing-ons-debt-rachel-reeves-taxes-b2651354.html