Selling the farm
The UK government has focused on closing a loophole for those buying farms to avoid inheritance tax, rather than focusing on the need for food security.
Debunking Economics - the podcast · Steve Keen & Phil Dobbie
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Show Notes
There’s an irony that the UK Chancellor Rachel Reeves has imposed an inheritance tax on farmers, whilst a trade agreement with the US could see Britain selling-the-farm on a farm grander scale.
Phil argues that some sort of tax on the inheritance of farms makes sense kif its only used as a tax dodge. Jeremy Clarkson bought his farm (reportedly for £6 million) and had a farm manager run it for 10 years before he started making his TV series. If we he died before the new tax rules the £6 million would have been passed on exempt from the rules of inheritance tax. A nice little tax dodge. So, surely, the government was right to close a loophole.
The broader question, though, is what the government does about farm productivity more generally. As Steve points out, 40 percent of UK food is imported. Just over the channel France is 80% self-sufficient. Rather than talking about buying stuff from over the Atlantic shouldn’t the UK be working out how to be more reliant on its own food sources, in the same way it is pushing to be more self-reliance on energy and defence?
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