Keeping pressure on the government: our campaign against inheritance tax changes
CLA Senior Public Affairs Manager Eleanor Wood explains how our lobbying team has been working behind the scenes to campaign against inheritance tax changes, but you can play your part too
Our campaigning work against the government’s devastating changes to inheritance tax (IHT) reliefs continues unabated, and we remain committed to pressing the chancellor and treasury to scrap the policy completely.
One key strand of our work is lobbying MPs, and we are calling on CLA members to help strengthen our collective voice. MPs have short memories, and we must ensure that we keep the momentum so they can see the damaging impact proposed changes to agricultural property relief and business property relief (APR/BPR) will have on the rural economy. This will help ensure they speak up against these changes and continue to push the chancellor to rethink the policy.
We have been working extensively behind the scenes, engaging with MPs, ministers, civil servants and other organisations to lobby against the removal of IHT reliefs. In collaboration with other trade bodies, we commissioned CBI Economics to model the impact of the proposed changes to APR and BPR on rural businesses and the wider economy. The survey, which collected 4,200 responses from family businesses, found:
- The changes have the potential to lose the Treasury £1.9bn of income and cost the overall economy £14.9bn in lost business revenue
- More than 200,000 jobs could be lost over this Parliament due to reductions in recruitment
- 23% of businesses have already cut jobs and paused recruitment ahead of the changes
- 55% of family businesses and 49% of farms have already cancelled proposed investment projects since the changes were announced.
An effective way to keep this information fresh for MPs is to ensure they hear directly from as many of their constituents as possible. Politicians react more favorably to hearing real life examples (with as much detail as you are comfortable with) than simple figures on a page and can use this information to directly lobby the chancellor and Treasury to change their mind.
We are calling on CLA members this Easter weekend to spare some time to write to your MP, highlighting the impact that the changes to APR and/or BPR would have on your business.
Important points to consider raising in your email include:
- How the changes will affect your business, from stopping you employing others, having to sell off land, or your plans for investment.
- What impact the changes will have on your supply chain and local community.
- Ask them to consider putting forward the alternative solution that the CLA and others have proposed in the form of a ‘clawback mechanism’.
The ‘clawback’ mechanism would mean that tax would apply only on inherited assets sold within a certain time period post-death if the proceeds are not reinvested into those continuing businesses. It would mean that those who keep these assets past this time period would not pay the tax.
