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I mean this is my takeaway.
And again you have mitigation strategies. So the breakdown of those who can't afford it, haven't had some sort of insurance in place, and can't secure debt at an affordable rate to manage the payments must be tiny.
As a group of people farmers are very up on various revenue streams and information, so I'd be surprised if many if any were caught unaware.
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In all of these situations where tax gets increased, people put forward this argument, but there's no obvious metric or cut-off for "can't afford it." If something gets more expensive for everyone then a small number of people will literally be unable to buy it without going into the red, but there will be a larger group of people who will have to use money that they'd earmarked for something else they wanted. A fair proportion of those will decide that it's too much of a strain on their lifestyle so they'll just not buy/invest in the original thing.
Ultimately taxing anything will make it less affordable so you have to have higher income/wealth to afford it than before. With farming the link seems fairly direct, since your ability to pay the tax is directly linked to the profitability of the thing that's being taxed. I think that the argument that this change will reduce tax avoidance and therefore reduce land values is a good, positive one, but I've still yet to see much engagement with the other obvious consequence i.e. that it will become harder to turn a profit on a farm that you've inherited, and what that means for the sector.
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hugo7
ffm
@dst2
The venn diagram of those who have to pay but can't afford it may be pretty small.