To be quite clear, you think all these things are good.
I don't.
They're inflationary, and as usual with all of them the extra money raised will be frittered away on non improvement of public services.
We'll all end up worse off with nothing to show for it.
You are a layman, right?
Not an economist?
What you've typed is nothing but your own prediction, which is in deviation from other, more expert sources. And you haven't offered any serious justification for what I can only tell is a "personal opinion".
What kind of person could possibly be upset that the worst paid are getting a bit of a bump up?
In contrast to you, I'm not offering a prediction one way or the other. I maintain that we will have to wait and see.
I think there is only one thing for certain that we can already see, conclusively, and that one thing is that the markets have not been spooked by any of this. FTSE is up by around 0.5% today. I would view that as potential evidence that your prediction may well be unfounded.
Another thing I would say to your prediction of inheritance tax destroying generational farming - on what grounds does that even make sense? Let's look at some facts.
The facts are that the
vast majority of farms - you know - those kinds of farms that are typically "generational", and not super-land owner's investment portfolio or conglomerate business properties... that vast majority will not be affected by
any IHT. None. For a generational farmer to not have "entrusted the family owned farm to offspring" already - that is probably not a generational farm.
Then we get to the nub of the detail. Farmers still enjoy a 50% reduction in IHT. What's more, they generally won't pay any tax until over a £3million threshold. Any tax due is 20% of the amount over that threshold. I reckon that generational farming typically will be OK.
I wonder if you've seen that Dyson was in the media providing "comment". But I wonder whether you believe any "comment" on this from Dyson is a trustworthy piece of media?
I understand that he owns 360,000 acres of farmland and he has been VERY upfront that he did this SOLELY to remove his estate from scope of IHT. Largest private land owner in UK, I think. The land value is given at OVER £550million. In what world is a "comment" from Dyson anything other than completely invalid?
So while the vast majority of generational farms will be completely unaffected, your opinion is that IHT will destroy generational farming.
The devil is in the detail, my friend, not some vox-pop outspoken mouthpiece that is not representative of the vast majority.
So we've established that a farmer has a far higher threshold of IHT and still at a preferential rate half that of any other "generational business". How does that compare to any other UK generational business? These have been paying IHT at non preferential rates and lower thresholds since forever, and they seem to manage OK, with little in the way, at least that I've detected, of campaigning (honestly) for lower IHT.
I do get you - I get the shift to increased taxation of farmers "in the feelies" too. Particularly in a conversation about UK food security. But we have to go with the facts and not our feelies.
I'm not saying this is all great. But I reject your prediction on account that we will just have to wait and see. Any prediction right now is not valid. You may turn out to be right. That wouldn't have made your prediction any more valid, though, because I tend to give more credibility to sources that do that prediction (honestly and impartially) as experts in that field (pun intended
)