Single Farm Payments

J55farmer

As a beef farmer I rely most on the EU's Single Farm Payment grant as my income, beef farming is a tough business and there's often been years where I've been lucky to just break even and I pretty much entirely rely on my single farm payment to keep food on the table for my family. My payment amounts to €50,000 a year but my big problem with this is why bother paying me all this money in the first place when tax rates are so penal? An awful lot of that money goes in taxes, it would only make sense to make the payment tax free, there's no point in giving out sizeable single farm payments if we're going to be taxed to the hills over it, it's tough enough already to try make a living out of farming besides this tax regime

Lockedout2

The single farm payment and CAP in general are to ensure that farmers can actually produce beef without it most would not survive.

In a lot of cases as you say most would have no profit and with the benefit of farm building allowances and stock relief can keep taxable profits under control.

There is a bit of a contradiction in that in the first part of your post you talk about keeping food in the table and then talk about the high rates of tax.

Most beef farmers I've dealt with paid limited amounts of tax. The younger generations whose spouse works off farm find that the farm income is over taxed as their spouse has most of the tax credits and the standard rate band.

J55farmer

Lockedout2 wrote: »

The single farm payment and CAP in general are to ensure that farmers can actually produce beef without it most would not survive.

In a lot of cases as you say most would have no profit and with the benefit of farm building allowances and stock relief can keep taxable profits under control.

There is a bit of a contradiction in that in the first part of your post you talk about keeping food in the table and then talk about the high rates of tax.

Most beef farmers I've dealt with paid limited amounts of tax. The younger generations whose spouse works off farm find that the farm income is over taxed as their spouse has most of the tax credits and the standard rate band.

What's the point though in giving me this single farm payment if I'm going to be taxed to the hills over it, if they brought in some sort of scheme where single farm payments would be tax free it would work far better, I need that money to get by and shouldn't have to pay tax on it when it's a grant, because of it my children can't get grants for college so it isn't of massive use to me

Are you offsetting all the allowable expenses against your tax bill? If you are just breaking even or worse on the farming itself you should have a significant amount to write off against tax.