Nat 🇬🇧

The farm inheritance tax was sold as a tax on the richest estates. It found an ordinary family farm at the second funeral. April 2026: the tax comes in. The news says only the biggest estates will pay. Dad and his son farm 800 acres. Nobody in the family has ever once called it an estate. June: Dad dies. Everything passes to Mum, and nothing is owed. The neighbours say it was never meant for people like them. Two winters later: Mum dies. Week 1: the son milks at five, buries his mother at eleven, and milks again at four. Week 3: the valuer walks the farm. 800 acres at the going rate is £6.8 million. With the farmhouse, two cottages, the machinery and the herd, nearly £8.5 million. The family has never seen £8.5 million. They have seen the overdraft. Week 4: the good news. Mum inherited Dad's unused allowance, so £5 million of the farm passes free. Week 5: the bad news. Everything above the line is taxed at 20%, and that is the good rate. Week 6: HMRC argues the farmhouse stopped being a farmhouse the day the widow living in it stopped farming. That part is taxed at 40%. Week 7: the allowance for the family home tapers to nothing. It was never designed for estates this size. Month 3: the bill. Around £600,000. Month 6: the first instalment falls due. The land cannot be sold until probate is granted, and probate will not be granted until the tax is paid. Month 7: the bank lends the family the money to pay the tax on the land, secured on the land. Years 1 to 10: £60,000 a year. Interest free on the farmland, with interest charged on the farmhouse. Defra's own figures put the average farm's return at half a percent of its value. On £8.5 million, that is about £42,000 a year. The cows are milked at five and four through every day of it. It was never a tax on the rich. It is a tax on still being there.