St John Kent

[Sama Hoole @SamaHoole]

A timeline of one man's cunning inheritance tax scheme.

2008: Buy a thousand acres in Oxfordshire. Tell The Times that dodging inheritance tax is the critical thing. Scheme live.

2009 to 2018: Do absolutely nothing. A villager farms it on contract. Flawless.

2019: The villager retires. Rather than hire another one, decide to farm a thousand acres yourself, having never grown anything.

Also 2019: Invite a film crew.

2020: Rain for nine weeks. Profit on a thousand acres: £144.

2021: Broadcast the £144 to the largest streaming platform on earth, thereby informing the entire planet that farmland makes nothing.

2021: Open a farm shop. Acquire a queue down a lane and the undivided attention of West Oxfordshire District Council.

2022: Restaurant refused. Enforcement notice. Six weeks to take a barn apart.

2023: Lose the appeal. Lose it again.

May 2024: Accidentally get English planning law rewritten. Lawyers name it Clarkson's Clause.

August 2024: Open a pub selling only British food. Sell your own sausage at 74p against 18p imported, and eat the difference on every plate.

October 2024: The Chancellor caps agricultural property relief at a million. Scheme dead.

November 2024: Stand on a platform in Westminster in front of thirteen thousand farmers, drawing maximum national attention to the exact tax break you were supposedly hiding behind.

July 2025: Go down with TB. First calf ever born on the farm destroyed, pregnant with twins. Gate padlocked.

23 December 2025: Government retreats. The threshold goes from one million to two and a half. Five million for a couple.

March 2026: Farm declared clear.

July 2026: Drive four hundred miles to Scotland and buy more cows.

Eighteen years.

Planning law changed. Agricultural degree applications climbing. Cited in the Commons more times than most ministers manage. Half the estates that were going to be caught by the tax are no longer caught by it.

He was accused of buying a farm to dodge inheritance tax, and then spent eighteen months getting the relief raised for everybody else's.

Worst tax dodger in British history.

Best thing to happen to British farming in fifty years.

[St John Kent @StJohnKent]

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[St John Kent @StJohnKent]

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