By Democrat reporter
Orkney and Shetland MP, Alistair Carmichael, has today responded to a new report by the Office of Budget Responsibility on the impact of changes to agricultural and business property relief on inheritance tax, warning that it confirmed that the changes are still “mired in practical problems”.
The OBR found that the tax yield to Treasury from the changes was subject to a “high” level of uncertainty, due to behavioural changes.
A former Procurator Fiscal at Dumbarton Sheriff Court, Mr Carmichael is Chair of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Select Committee.
Mr Carmichael said: “This report confirms that the government’s misguided approach to farm inheritance tax is still mired in practical problems and risks harming farmers and crofters for very little benefit to the Exchequer. In the words of one expert to my committee last year: ‘It hits the people they say they are protecting and it protects the people they say they are hitting’.
“It is deeply concerning that the OBR seems to expect that older farmers will be paying the hardest price from this tax. They followed the advice they were given throughout their lives and now they have had the rug pulled from under them before they can change their plans. With tax revenue expected to be highly uncertain and unstable for two decades, the logic behind these changes simply does not add up.
“Farmers, crofters and food producers are vital for our country. The government must do the right thing and rethink these plans, before it is too late.”
Tax them till the pips squeak someone once said.
But its a bit more insidious than that. Labour are now set on a course to extract inheritance tax from the average family home, or the remote croft that has been in the family for generations.
That’s what’s going to happen. Family house needing to be sold to pay the inheritance tax. Ditto the small holding of land.
Work all your life to pay for a house and then it gets taken off you, or more accurately, since you are gone, your immediate family. It’s sublime. Truly sublime.
And of course anyone who has been unfortunate enough to save up and pay for their house also have the burden that if they need care, the house can be sold from under them to pay for care. Happens all the time, and especially hard for folks who maybe bought a modest council house.
Sir Keir Starmer has certainly got it in one. And he’s looking at means testing and or taxing the state pension too depending on what assets folks might have.
But hey, I really do wonder if folks care. Or maybe its just that they don’t know. But good old honest, decent, efficient council services need to be paid for. Ask Michelle Mone, she’ll tell you!