James Dyson stands to lose £111 million following Labour’s inheritance tax raid, according to calculations shared by Jo Maugham on X.
The Singapore-based billionaire claimed that last week’s Budget would be ‘the death of entrepreneurship’ as it targets ‘family firms’ and ‘farmers’ in yesterday’s Sunday Times.
But as Maugham from the Good Law Project has pointed out on x, the entrepreneur, whose family is worth £20 billion, forgot to mention that the changes would hike up the tax bill facing whoever inherits his own 36,000 acres of land.
Agricultural land tax
Last week’s Budget brought about an end to the inheritance tax exemption for those passing on businesses and agricultural land.
There has been a raft of hysterical headlines since then about the impact of the changes on farmers.
But, as Dan Neidle, of Tax Policy Associates, argued in a thread on X: “The data shows that most of the cost of the tax increase will be borne by a few very large estates.”
Large estates
Sir James Dyson, it turns out, is one of the ‘very large estates’ that would be most affected.
His article railed about the impact of the change on ‘family firms’. But Dyson Farming Limited, with its £5.2 million in profit last year, isn’t exactly a small family business.
The company accounts show that this ‘family firm’ owns half a billion pounds worth of land.
As Maugham points out: “20 per cent of that – the new rate of inheritance tax on farmland – is £111m.
“No wonder he’s having a grump.’’
“Suck it up”
Journalists on x were quick to highlight that this was quite a significant thing to miss out, with Kevin Maguire of the Mirror posting: “Is he the multi-billionaire James Dyson who bought estates to become one of Britain’s biggest landowners?”
Members of the general public were none too pleased either.
One had some advice that might also apply to Jeremy Clarkson: “Whatever your feeling on the rights and wrongs of this change in [Inheritance Tax], Dyson should not be the poster boy for it.”
Perhaps the best words of wisdom for Britain’s fifth richest man, though, came from Professor Colin Talbot: “My advice to James Dyson? Suck it up.”
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