Sadly I’m running out of time, and thank you again for your detailed reply, but a couple of points: the Clarkson example could be better handled through taxation on his earnings during his lifetime, your prices are primarily relevant to land rather than complete farms - typically in Devon/Cornwall you’d be looking at 15-30k per acre when farmhouse etc. is included, and finally the money made running a farm often ends up reinvested or used in the subsequent running of the farm, so stripping £40k out of it in your example would significantly affect the running of the farm the next year and so on. Ok, got to rush…

Thank you for the detail - I understand it’s not necessarily due in one go, but “even” 40k per year is still not loose change that the vast majority of farmers will have lying around, and my point about having to liquidate assets still stands, whether a smaller amount of assets per year or deferred. The wealth of most farms is tied up in the land and property, and the items required to run the farm in the first place. A further point would be that if it is to be considered a small, easily repayable sum, then given the small number of farmers likely to be affected each year in the first place, why bother? It’s not a significant source of government revenue and risks driving some farms out of business, for what?

I was born and brought up in an extremely rural area of the westcountry, and I’m well aware of the “farmer hard times” saying as farmers drive past in e.g. brand new landrovers, but this inheritance tax change has not been thought through. Assuming a farm is liable to inheritance tax, where does the money come from without liquidating assets? Sell part of the farm? So then you have a small piece of land with agricultural use restrictions, no infrastructure, probably too small to form a separate farm. Repeat for a few generations and all the farms are then the same size, with efficiency of scale problems - not to mention where do the new farmers come from? Sell farm machinery - great, you’ve no business. Sell your stock - you’ve no business.

Much better to tax people when they are alive, on their earnings, and expand it to all earnings from any source, lumped together and charged at the relevant rate of income tax.