Very worrying that 35% of British Institute of Innkeeping members have said they could be forced to close their doors if the #Government doesn’t reduce the tax burden at the Autumn Budget. 🙏🏻😔
Almost 400 UK pubs set to close in 2025 due to ‘high taxes and business rates’ #Echobox=1752108709" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener">independent.co.uk/news/uk-pub-cl…
Well worth a watch.
@CommonsEFRA
Hosting the Minister and asking about agriculture, profitability, eu trade deal and other items in his portfolio.
Parliamentlive.tv - Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee search.app/4vG1X8XpnCSDyG…
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Faram's Beth and Paul had an amazing time at Heriot-Watt University last week, hosting an AromaFest®! 🌿 It was a pleasure to spread the word to the next generation of brewers about our Hop Development Programme, while showcasing some brilliant examples, and gaining some most important assessment feedback! 🌱 Cheers to the hops of the future! 🍺
#AromaFest® #FutureOfBrewing
It’s worth watching Ed Conway’s superb analysis of ‘farmageddon’.
It’s not just inheritance tax that is putting farmers into financial jeopardy. The UK farming sector is under risk from a multitude of issues including rising food imports from abroad, cuts to countryside flood protection, unfair supermarket purchase prices and diminishing government subsidies for actual food production.
‘You demonstrate the same lack of understanding the treasury shows.’
Tory MP @Ashley7Fox responds to the idea that farmers should stomach the government’s inheritance tax increases.
Refresher and update on changes to APR/BPR for inheritance tax
The changes proposed to APR & BPR will raise around £200m a year from farming by 2028/29, suggested Dan Neidle of Tax Policy Associates on Saturday, with another £300m or so from other family businesses, and from IHT avoidance schemes. This seems the right sort of ballpark to me.
Rumour suggests that this draft policy was kicking around the Treasury for a while with no real political appetite for it. But with support from Arun Advani of CenTax, it was picked up by Rachel Reeves and announced in her Budget. Initially we were told this was about preventing tax avoidance, but then the PM explained to the Parliamentary Oversight Committee that it had no such underlying policy - it was just a money raiser. Nobody had done an impact assessment before introducing the policy to understand whether it might in fact severely damage critical industries.
If they had, they would have found out that paring back APR and BPR threatens continuation of family businesses who have to find 20% or so of their value every generation to pay in tax. This jeopardises investment, growth and employment within those businesses.
Ministers took the unusual step of recommending that people take tax planning advice to mitigate the impact. However elderly and infirm business owners, and those with limited income, may not have time or may not be able to plan to protect their business.
In particular, analysis shows that even if a typical family farm used its entire income for a decade it still wouldn’t be able to afford the proposed tax without selling land. Partly, this is because food production has very tight margin. Partly because there are many pressures on land – development, renewables, food production, environmental benefits – and so land values are much higher than you might expect using normal earnings multipliers. Regardless, farmers and their advisors were shocked to see an unaffordable tax charge being proposed that would cripple their business following a death.
Tax experts explained that, luckily, the Treasury could avoid most negative impacts without significantly reducing the tax take by slightly retargeting the proposal. Ideas have been suggested like reducing the relief but adding a clawback arrangement, so that tax falls due when assets are sold, not on death. That would protect growth, investment and productivity across the OMB sector, all of which are at the heart of the Chancellor’s agenda.
Disappointingly the Treasury flatly refused to consult on improvements. As a result, farmers have been protesting since the Budget, trying to convey that this proposal severely threatens the future of their business.
On Tuesday 18th February the NFU and others are finally meeting with Minister James Murray (who gave the keynote speech at the launch of CenTax in November 2024) to try to persuade him that a shift in implementation of this policy is in everyone’s interest. Given his link to CenTax and its support for this policy, I am not confident of their success, but the meeting is a positive step.
I remain hopeful that common sense and pragmatism can triumph over ideology.
Had sooo many conversations about #FamilyFarmTax
What still confuses the life out of me is why there aren’t more family businesses standing up against changes to #BPR
I can only surmise that farmers are so used to being 💩on by gov they HAVE to be politically engaged ALL THE TIME
BPR is not just a farming issue, it affects all businesses, it stifles growth and the future of many businesses so please join us at the London Palladium on Mon 16th Dec, 12 to 3pm for a business summit. #Budget@loosecollie@agricontract@TWBFarms
To register 👇
lwtheatres.co.uk/whats-on/bpr-s…