𝓤𝓷𝓲𝓽𝓮𝓭 𝓝𝓮𝔀𝓼

Vacuum cleaner billionaire James Dyson has accused Rachel Reeves of “destroying” family businesses with her interitance tax raid on farmers.

He slammed the Chancellor’s “vindictiveness” for removing farms and family businesses’ exemption from inheritance tax – which will be charged at 20% on assets above £1million from April 2026.

Mr Dyson, who owns farmland in Lincolnshire, Oxfordshire, Gloucestershire and Somerset, said the farms and businesses due to be affected currently employ 14 million people and contribute billions “year in, year our – funding vital public services”.

He wrote in a letter to The Times: “This is what Rachel Reeves will kill off with her budget, which introduces a confiscation of 20% of all family companies at every generation, based not on assets (as with farming) but on a much higher figure, a theoretical multiple of future profits.

“Furthermore, the 20% will be 40% because families will be forced to generate the tax payment via dividends, upon which more tax is levied.

“It is only British family businesses that are being fleeced and decimated like this — private equity and publicly quoted businesses are not touched. Why this vindictiveness only towards British families?

“Reeves will destroy both the family businesses themselves and a source of untold billions in tax revenue to raise a maximum of £500 million by 2030, according to the Treasury’s forecast. She is killing the geese that lay the golden eggs.”

The 20% inheritance tax – half the standard rate of 40% for other estates – is expected to generate £500 million a year by 2030, the Treasury said.

The finance ministry added that only a few hundred estates a year will be affected, and economists say it’ll disincentivise wealthy people avoiding tax through agricultural land.

Ms Reeves defended the move as a way to put public finances “on a firm footing”. She told the BBC: “In the most recent year of tax data, 40% of the benefit of agricultural property relief went to just 7% of estates.

“Thirty-seven estates got more than £100 million of tax relief. That is not affordable and it is not fair. Agricultural property relief will still be a more generous system of inheritance tax than anyone else pays.

“We’re making some changes to one part of the way in which very wealthy people from abroad are taxed.

“What we announced is around the temporary repatriation facility, which is enabling people, including those who have been non-doms, to bring money into this country from abroad without paying punitive rates of tax.”