Part of the appeal of Clarkson’s Farm is that, despite his souped-up Lamborghini tractors and top-of-the-range equipment, TV presenters just don’t make good farmers.
He calls his farm ‘Diddly Squat’ because that is exactly what it makes.
Of the 1,000 acres of prime Cotswold land bought in 2008, 500 are farmed and the others are left for meadows, streams, woods and pet projects like farming nettles and sucking blackberries into Henry Hoovers.
It is, as Clarkson frequently admits himself, an inefficient business that would fail if it wasn’t propped up by Who Wants to be a Millionaire money.
The only real value he can extract from it will come when he passes away and swerves what would have otherwise been a tasty inheritance tax bill from the government which, until this week, exempted farmland.
‘Like the Cayman Islands with fewer beaches and more cow dung’
And he’s not alone.
Millionaires such as Clarkson have cottoned onto the fact that farms have been one of the most efficient vehicles for tax avoidance in the country for some time now, using them as a sort of Cayman Islands with fewer beaches and more cow dung.
James Dyson, who is reputed to own 36,000 acres of farmland in Lincolnshire and Somerset, is another high-profile multi-millionaire who will be hit by the new rule changes.
The Brexiteer, who moved his company’s headquarters out of the UK following the decision to leave the European Union, has put a lot of his wealth into such investments, a former Conservative cabinet minister who was tipped off about the raid said.
“He thought we were doing a lousy job, so I would like to be a fly on his wall when he hears about the budget.”
Overdone
The reaction from the farming community to the Budget has been pretty ferocious, but given that the majority of farms, especially small to mid-size farms, will remain untouched by the moves, it does feel a touch overdone.
As Good Law Project founder Jolyon Maugham points out, the tax should aid Britain’s food supply, putting land back in the hands of real farmers.
“Inheritance tax will reduce the value it has as a token to pass wealth down tax-free between generations, so that farmland is cheaper and farming more profitable”, he noted on X.
It will also reduce the number of people who hold farmland as a token to pass wealth down tax-free between generations so it is instead held by people who hold it to farm it so it is more efficiently used.
And when you put it that way, what’s not to like?
Related: Jeremy Clarkson is furious about the Budget and people think they know why