Dear sir,
The 2024 Budget – just Naive and Vindictive
I refer to the budget statement as released yesterday and comment as follows:
1. There are approximately 33 million employees in the UK and 13 million self employed individuals, with just over 100,000 being farmers.
2. Quite why Mrs.Reeves sees fit to place the increased tax burden almost solely on the two latter categories of the self employed and farmers is beyond me.
3. The rises in minimum rates of pay and Employers NIC can only lead to either inflation (thus justifying the retention of higher rates of interest) or redundancies. Neither an incentive for growth.
4. The attack on farmers through IHT is also perverse. The SFP has been removed, interest rates are crippling and two poor harvests are causing more than enough economic pain already.
5. Quite what the £1miilion relief is therefore supposed to achieve I do not know. At best it might save 100 acres from tax, but successive government policy has already made that size of farm uneconomic long ago. This policy is not farming related, it is simply George Orwell’s ‘Animal farm’ at its worst. We went through 13 years of Blair and Brown (1997-2010) and neither amended APR, but this is clearly a different manifestation of socialism.
6. One has to conclude that Mrs.Reeves is on some form of revenge mission; perhaps seeing a correlation between herself and Mrs.Thatcher and the 1980’s mining industry? Or perhaps she didn’t like the austerity that followed the banking crash of 2007? In fact, what evidence is there that this government want a farming industry at all? It is far from clear to me, but unlike mining they do have the problem that the townies do like the countryside to look pretty on the way to the spa or football, so will have to do something with their inconvenient rural cousins.
This is easily the most divisive budget I can remember since 1984 when I qualified. It almost seems psychological in nature. Why solely attack those in society that strive to better themselves and their families? Great Britain was not made Great by either civil servants or career politicians who have never run anything other than a tap or parkrun. I had better stop.
Rest assured I have already a number of strategies that we can employ to your specific circumstances. Please contact me to discuss as we apparently have until April 2026 and so the sooner we start the debate the better. I am genuinely very cross at the missed opportunity to do so much better.
Yours faithfully
John Harris
Harris and Clarke LLP