Three hundred and fifty-five wealthy landowners in England including aristocrats are benefiting from an obscure tax break worth at least £68m, data shows.
The landowners benefit from a loophole called the “tax-exempt heritage assets scheme”, under which they can register land and property as heritage assets and make them exempt from inheritance tax.
Campaigners have called for the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, to cancel the tax break in Wednesday’s budget and use the money for nature recovery instead.
Conditions for the scheme, campaigners argue, are loose and do not require the landowners to protect the land for the environment. The tax break applies to those who agree to “look after” the land and “make it available for the general public to view”. Additionally, at least seven grouse moor estates gain this extra money in return for giving the public access to moorland that they are legally bound to give.
According to HM Revenue and Customs, estates that benefit from the tax break include the Hampden Estate, owned by the Earl of Buckinghamshire, host to the Hampden shoot. Another is the Newburgh Priory estate in Yorkshire, which hosts a large pheasant and partridge shoot, and the Bolton Abbey estate in Yorkshire, owned by the Duke of Devonshire and dominated by a large grouse moor. The value of the tax exemption given to such estates has not been revealed until now.
Under freedom of information laws, HMRC disclosed to the nature campaigner and writer Guy Shrubsole that for the small number of estates designated under the scheme between 2020 and 2024, the tax deferred was £45.8m. The tax deferred by just five estates designated under the scheme between 2014 and 2019 was £22.7m.
Given that about 350 landowners are beneficiaries, the total value of the tax break will be far higher. According to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, inheritance tax is only paid by 4% of estates, so those benefiting from the loophole will be wealthy.
Shrubsole, whose recent book, The Lie of the Land, argues that landowners should be made more accountable for how they use and misuse land, said: “With the country’s finances left in such a poor state by the previous government, it’s outrageous that the wealthy owners of ecologically destructive grouse moors and pheasant shoots are getting generous tax breaks in return for highly questionable benefits to the taxpayer.
“Setting fire to moorland for grouse shooting and releasing 50 million non-native pheasants into the countryside every year for sport is no way to ‘look after’ our land.
“Rachel Reeves could save the taxpayer tens of millions of pounds, and reduce the pressures on our ailing wildlife and habitats, by cancelling these outdated tax breaks in her upcoming budget.”
The Treasury has been contacted for comment.
