The change announced on Tuesday<\/a> followed months of protests by farmers and farming groups and concern from MPs.<\/p>\nDan Willis, who runs Rookery Farms near Newbury, Berkshire, said a potential tax bill could still make running the family-owned farm unviable.<\/p>\n
Environment secretary Emma Reynolds said the government had “listened closely to farmers across the country” and the changes were made “to protect more ordinary family farms.”<\/p>\n
Mr Willis said the change was a “step in the right direction” but that he could still face a \u00a3650,000 inheritance tax bill on his 2,000-acre farm on the death of his mother, who co-owns it. The farm has been in his family for five generations.<\/p>\n
“I think [the family has] more than bought and paid for the land and we’ve certainly worked the land. It just seems wrong,” he said.<\/p>\n
“Yes [the change] is a help but on 2,000 acres we made \u00a318,000 last year. If you look at it like that, with a tax bill of circa \u00a365,000 a year to pay for 10 years on the passing of my mother, I can’t do it.<\/p>\n
“We’re price takers; we can’t put the prices up to increase our profits.”<\/p>\n
At last year’s Budget, ministers said they would start imposing a 20% tax on inherited agricultural assets worth more than \u00a31m from April 2026, ending the 100% tax relief that had been in place since the 1980s.<\/p>\n
Colin Rayner, who has been farming in Berkshire since the 1970s, said he “rejoiced” at the change because of the toll on some farmers’ mental health.<\/p>\n
He added that Berkshire residents had “warmly welcomed” farmers at recent protests.<\/p>\n
“I felt like a rockstar at times. In the past we weren’t loved and the politicians told us we weren’t loved but the public of Berkshire do love us,” he added.<\/p>\n
“We’ve got a long way to go. Hopefully [the change] might mean that my daughters might be able to inherit some of the farm without having an enormous tax bill.”<\/p>\n
Olly Glover, Liberal Democrat MP for Didcot and Wantage, said it was “about time” the government changed its policy.<\/p>\n
“They have expended a huge amount of political capital on this,” he said.<\/p>\n
“For ages they were adamant that they wouldn’t change and they have. It’s caused all this uncertainty for absolutely no benefit at all.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A farmer has welcomed the government’s decision to dilute its proposals to tax inherited farmland with the threshold…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":199685,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[138,246,111,139,69,244,245],"class_list":{"0":"post-199684","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-personal-finance","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-finance","10":"tag-new-zealand","11":"tag-newzealand","12":"tag-nz","13":"tag-personal-finance","14":"tag-personalfinance"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199684","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=199684"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/199684\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/199685"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=199684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=199684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=199684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}