The Environmental and Rural Affairs select committee is surely right that the government imposed the inheritance tax changes on farmland without proper consultation – and ignored the likelihood that they will cause serious hardship for family farms.
Never mind the threshold which Rachel Reeves claims will mean most farms can still be passed on IHT-free – something questioned by the NFU and other critics – the new rules will inevitably drive many larger farms out of business when the current generation passes on.
But is there really any point in what the committee is proposing: that the changes are simply delayed for a year? Surely what we really need is some serious thought put into how government can close the loophole whereby wealthy individuals can avoid inheritance tax by putting their wealth into farmland – without impacting family farms.
It is not just farms that are affected by Reeves’s tax grab – it is family businesses of all kinds.
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