With a register of taxes on things, from the Danegeld to the pasty, and a comparison the Bursar was asked to make and has asked the College to forget.
Feasible as a savings account; the Bursar’s table proves it. Not recommended, because the country has to eat and the College has to lunch. The tax is fair in its aim and unfair in its instrument: it measures value and not use, and cannot tell an investor who owns farmland from a farmer who works it. The College withdraws its claim that the tax hits the poorest and substitutes: it hits the wrong people, precisely. A farmer whose land is worth £3.5 million and whose farm pays £49,700 a year has the means of somebody on £49,700, and should not be taxed as though they had the rest. Recommendation: tax the sale, not the death, and the investor, not the farmer. The heir who goes on farming pays nothing; the heir who sells pays in full. The law already waits for a wood to be felled before it charges the timber, and the College asks that it wait for a field.
The rule and its amendments, HM Treasury’s and HMRC’s figures, Defra’s Farm Business Survey, Bank Rate, the farmland index, the speeches of 14 September as reported and the historical taxes are real and referenced. The Department, its Fellow, the Bursar, the College’s forty hides and its expenditure are not. No private farmer is named. The paper is not advice on tax or on anything else.
