Maintaining agri-tax reliefs is a key issue that the Irish Farmers’ Association (IFA) will focus on ahead of its budget submission for 2024.
The 2024 budget is expected to be announced in October, and the IFA is expected to deliver a completed submission to the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (DAFM).
IFA Farm Business chair Rose Mary McDonagh told Agriland that the submission is currently in “a draft format”, and that it has been “submitted in draft to the department”.
Budget issues were discussed with Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Charlie McConalogue yesterday (Thursday, July 20) in a meeting attended by the IFA.
IFA president Tim Cullinan said: “At the outset, we made it clear to the minister that his plan to delay payments to farmers this year is totally unacceptable,” he said.
Meanwhile, McDonagh asked that the budget would be “fair and equitable and that there’s no discrimination for farmers”.
Budget 2024
Regarding the IFA’s pre-Budget 2024 submission, McDonagh outlined that “the big concern at the moment we have would be the agri-tax reliefs”.
“The 90% agricultural relief is needed for lifetime transfers, intergenerational change, to encourage the transfer of the farm to the next generation, as young as possible in their lifetime.”
The importance of the reliefs is to ensure “the next generation wouldn’t be burdened with a tax bill” and to encourage lifetime transfers, “not to be leaving them until after death,” McDonagh said.
Further agri-tax relief which the IFA is seeking ahead of its budget submission is the maintenance of the consanguinity relief.
McDonagh said “consanguinity relief brings stamp duty down to 1%” and added that “stamp duty at 7.5% is penal”.
The IFA Farm Business chair said after the meeting that “the minister was clear that the government is committed to reliefs that are in place and that he was not aware of any proposals within government to reduce them or curtail them”.
RZLT
Addressing the Residential Zoned Land Tax (RZLT) is key for the IFA ahead of the 2024 budget, as it is a major issue for farmers who may be faced with the annual tax.
The RZLT will be calculated at 3% of the market value of land “in scope” – which includes land zoned for residential development and land that could be connected to services.
In the meeting yesterday with Minister McConalogue, McDonagh said: “The minister also said he was committed to working with the Minister for Finance to ‘fix’ the RZLT issue for actively farmed land,” she said.
“We want farm land exempt”, she told Agriland, and referred to the fact that farmed land “was exempt in the vacant site levy previously”.
“There’s a huge amount of farmers impacted by this residential zone land tax and who never asked for it to be zoned.
“There are plenty of farmers out there I would say who don’t even know their lands are zoned,” according to the IFA Farm Business chair.
Funding for schemes
McDonagh called for the Brexit Adjustment Reserve (BAR) to be utilised in support of schemes for farmers in this year’s budget.
She said: “It is part of the IFA’s budget submission that more of it needs to go to agriculture.”
McDonagh commented on the proposal of BAR funding to go towards REPowerEU, which outlines new measures to give member states and planning authorities more leeway to accelerate the planning process for new renewable energy projects.
“I think it’s unbelievable they’re talking about how some of it is to go back to the EU. We should hold on to it and spend it while we have it,” McDonagh continued.
BAR funding was discussed in the meeting with the minister, as Cullinane said: “The government must ensure BAR funding is allocated to the beef and sheep sectors before the end of this year.
“Giving the money back to the EU would be a scandal.”
Further issues that the budget should account for this year raised by the delegation in the meeting yesterday included:
- Additional funding to be accepted for all applicants in Tranche 2 of ACRES;
- All applicants to be paid in full in the suckler cow efficiency programme (SCEP);
- The opening of a national suckler scheme to replace BEEP-s and the provision for this scheme in next year’s budgetary allocation;
- Proposals for €100 calf rearing and beef sustainability payments;
- Supports for tillage farmers who are facing a very difficult year;
- Full payment for all applicants to the National Liming Programme, and for its rollover and increased budget in 2024.
Support for other sectors was also raised at the meeting, as national livestock and sheep chairs Brendan Golden and Kevin Comiskey emphasised the need to increase the support for suckler cows and ewes to €300 and €30/head respectively.
The issue of 0% VAT on all non-oral animal medicines and vaccines was also discussed at the meeting and the IFA has said: “The minister agreed that this is something that he will look at.”