Killer Arguments Against LVT, Not (493)

Under an LVT-supporting article in The Guardian:

acornishfarmer
average farm 213 acres …worth £2M…
average income per acre £66 (2019 yr)…£12000
… you would bust family farming in UK for ever

Complete moron. He or she ignores how much (or little) LVT on farmland would be.

1. Size of farm – irrelevant
2. Current selling price of farmland – irrelevant.
3. Average income per acre – £66, that seems low to me, but I’ll take their word for it. Of that, maybe £20/acre is average land rental value – the LVT would be a percentage of this. The rest is earned income and irrelevant to LVT.
4. Farmers (and their workers) would benefit from the same reductions in VAT* and National Insurance (those first as they are the most damaging taxes), so would at worst break even under LVT.
5. Tenant farmers – who pay on average a lot more than £20/acre seem to manage somehow. Long time LVT supporters and lifelong farmer Dr D Pickard owns some land and rents extra bits as and when he ‘needs’ them, i.e. if he can make a net profit after paying rent. If he can make a net profit after paying full rent, he can certainly make a net profit after paying LVT, which by definition would be less than the full rent.

* “But farmers and their workers don’t have to charge VAT!” shout more morons. Directly or indirectly they very much do – the wheat they sell that end up in biscuits or alcohol are indirectly subject to VAT. They pay VAT directly on their personal expenditure.