New tax rule might force British farmers to sell their century-old family lands
British government plans to remove tax benefits for farm inheritance starting in about 1.5 years. This decision could force many family farms to be sold to big companies due to high tax costs
Rachel Reeves made a big announcement this week that changes how farm-owners pass their land to kids; starting from 04/26 farmers must pay one-fifth of the value above 1mil pounds in taxes
The new rule looks ok on paper but its actually a huge problem: farm-land costs are sky-high these days but most farmers dont make that much money (which means they might need to sell parts of their property just to pay the tax bill)
What makes this worse is that Steve Reed who now runs environmental stuff told everyone before: “we have no intention of changing“ these tax rules; seems like they forgot about their promises to help countryside folks. Now with more than 100 MPs in rural areas Labourʼs big win might not look so stable anymore
Reed wrote something interesting in papers today: “food security is national security“; but his own rules work against this idea – making food production more expensive will either hit shoppers wallets or make UK depend more on foreign food
The scariest part is what this means for family farms: these places that stayed in families for hundreds of years might end up being sold to big farming companies. This could really change how british countryside looks and works (and not in a good way)
