### Letter to The Guardian, 22nd November 2024 ###
Dear Editor,
I read Polly Toynbee’s article on the farmer’s protest against inheritance tax (The Guardian, 22nd Nov 2024, link below) and found the “default comparison” between “rich and poor” not sitting well with me …
Yes, there certainly are some very rich farmers but surely we cannot lump them into one category and my heart goes out to smaller farmers (everywhere!) who are being squeezed especially by the power of the supermarket buyers who are busy minimising costs both for their shareholders and for us, the consumers. In this equation it is certainly the smaller farmers who draw the short straw.
So let us ponder an alternative taxation-paradigm: That of “people” versus “corporate” …
If smaller farmers cannot afford to pass on their farms to their children, then those farms will certainly fall into the hands of investors and so food production will go the same way as retail with the anonymous, offshore, tax-dodging “corporate players” taking over.
Indeed, as I watch the online shopping packages (from businesses with their tax-location in Luxembourg!) pile up in the staircase of our building and see family-run shops closing down left, right and centre, the thing that I yearn for is not that the rich be taxed more (although that is generally not a bad thing) but rather that governments get to grips with taxing “The Corporates” so that REAL people can return to playing a role in the economy … running businesses (and farms!) rather than driving delivery vans … or satellite-controlled, corporate mega-tractors maxing-out on pesticides and GMOs!
Yours,
Alan Mitcham
Link to original article: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/nov/22/farmers-protest-tax-labour-reform
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