From my £12k income give to Rachel Reeves

FARMERS have hit out at the Government for “destroying” the sector with impossible tax bills.

- By Eleanor Burleigh

A third generation farmer, who will be handed a bill of more than £1million when he inherits the site from his father, will join a demonstration outside the Labour conference in Liverpool today.

Charlie Walford will take the reins of the 400-acre mixed arable and beef site, bought by his family in 1949, from his father.

At £3million, Upton Bridge Farm in Somerset is well above the £1million threshold for IHT, from which agricultural assets were previously exempt.

But Charlie’s family says it only makes a 1% return on investment, and the site turned over a taxable profit of just £12,000 in 2023.

He said: “I’m looking at an invoice from HMRC of just over £1 million to inherit the farm.

“So out of my £12,000 a year, I have to find £100,000 to give to Rachel Reeves each year for a decade. I don’t know what I’m going to do. If I sold half the land, I’d have to pay capital gains on it, which means I might have to sell the other half as well.”

Each previous generation has handed it down to their descendants tax-free but after Labour's inheritance tax change comes into effect next April, he will be charged a levy of 20%.

The Daily Express has called for a U-turn on the IHT changes as part of its Save Britain’s Family Farms campaign, warning the tax hike will make it financially punishing, if not impossible, for farmers to pass land down.

Appalling

Alan Hughes, 37, a fourth-generation farmer from North Herefordshire, said he had been welcomed at the recent Reform UK and Liberal Democrats conferences and has got delegate status at the Tory conference next week.

But when he approached Labour, he claimed there was “no response”. He said: “Labour isn’t interested. They don’t want to speak to farmers.”

Campaigners claim more than 6,000 rural businesses have folded since the change was announced, with elderly farmers hastening to dispose of their assets before they are subject to huge levies.