🚜 This is what a tax against growth looks like. A @CLAtweets survey of 700 rural family businesses found: 🚜 89% have paused investment 🚜 64% of those cancelling projects have abandoned plans worth more than £50,000 🚜 More than a third have withheld over £150,000 🚜 85% say the £2.5 million allowance does not cover their business 🚜 Almost half expect to sell at least a quarter of their land 🚜 70% fear their business will not survive another decade These are not passive assets sitting in a bank account. They are working farms: asset rich but often desperately cash poor. Farmers are cancelling machinery purchases, holiday accommodation, solar panels, crop production and reservoirs desperately needed to withstand drought. Some are even allowing buildings and land to deteriorate because the Government has created a financial incentive to prevent their businesses increasing in value. Hannah Darby’s family has shelved a £200,000 holiday let conversion and a 16kW solar installation. An inheritance tax bill approaching £500,000 could force them to sell land and leave their farm unviable. The entire APR/BPR reform is forecast to raise only about £295 million a year by 2030–31. Yet it is already freezing private investment, weakening food production, obstructing renewable energy and destroying confidence throughout the rural economy. The Government’s impact assessment claimed the policy would have no significant macroeconomic effect. The real economy is now delivering its verdict. If @andyburnham and @JohnHealey_MP genuinely want growth in every postcode, they must reverse this self defeating tax in the autumn Budget. You cannot tax working family farms into shrinking and call it economic growth.