Emma Reynolds, the Environment Secretary<\/a>, who said last year that, when the tax was watered down, it was \u201conly right\u201d larger estates contributed more.<\/p>\nBefore the Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, announced the changes in her 2024 Budget, farms and businesses could be handed down through generations with zero inheritance tax to pay.<\/p>\n
This is no longer the case for 185 families, who will be dragged into paying tax on inherited agricultural and business property in 2026-2027, according to the latest official figures.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf I had my money in stocks and shares, I would simply pay the tax by selling some of my portfolio,\u201d says Harris.<\/p>\n
But the reality for the Brackenburgh Estate, and many others like it, is far more complex than Reynolds makes out.<\/p>\n
\u2018Breaks up the community\u2019<\/p>\n
Harris manages around half of the estate himself. The rest is tenanted land on decades-long leases to local farming families, which provides them with a livelihood. The rents are relatively low, at around \u00a390 an acre.<\/p>\n
He covers the maintenance and insurance costs of the buildings used by these farmers, and he also owns a local school and a pub, which are vital to the community living on his land.<\/p>\n
Selling any of this property to pay the tax bill would be difficult, Harris says.<\/p>\n
This is because few buyers would want to invest in the leases, which in some years make a loss or barely break even and will not expire for many years to come.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re a big family,\u201d Harris explains, adding that it would be \u201ctragic\u201d to sell land that is home to his tenants. \u201cIt just breaks up the community.\u201d<\/p>\n
There are a handful of other grim options. After he dies, the land Harris manages could be sold, but this would involve closing a dairy farm and letting go of a team of workers. He also owns 800 acres of forest that could be cut down to raise cash.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe sit here poring over the figures and just can\u2019t see a way out,\u201d he says. \u201cIt leaves me completely distraught.\u201d<\/p>\n
Harris is calling on the Government to implement proposals from the Tenant Farmers Association (TFA), the industry body for agricultural landlords and tenants, to exempt tenancies of 10 years or more from inheritance tax.<\/p>\n
Labour\u2019s tax on farms also threatens to hit those renting agricultural land. This is because shares in farm tenancies can be split between family members, for example a husband and wife or father and son.<\/p>\n
Should one member die and leave their share to another, with a value above the zero-rate threshold, they will be required to pay.<\/p>\n
And they could be put in the precarious position of being stuck with a bill without enough assets that could be sold to pay it. Roughly one third of agricultural land in England and Wales is farmed under some form of farm tenancy agreement, according to the TFA.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Harris understands why some might dismiss him as a \u201crich old man who lives in a big house…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":415317,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[177],"tags":[186773,79,18,139854,13181,19,6500,17,9171,127193,825,234,235,12390,1702,4520,46523],"class_list":["post-415316","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-personal-finance","tag-better-life-feature","tag-business","tag-eire","tag-emma-reynolds","tag-farming","tag-ie","tag-inheritance-tax","tag-ireland","tag-labour-party","tag-lake-district","tag-money","tag-personal-finance","tag-personalfinance","tag-rachel-reeves","tag-standard","tag-tax","tag-top-story"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ie\/116330791288177764","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415316","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=415316"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/415316\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/415317"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=415316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=415316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=415316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}