James Dyson: Chancellor is taking an ‘ignorant swipe at aspiration’

Entrepreneur accuses Rachel Reeves of ‘spiteful’ Budget

The Government’s inheritance tax raid in the Budget was “spiteful” and risks killing off many family businesses, Sir James Dyson has said.
The 77-year-old inventor and entrepreneur accused Rachel Reeves of an “ignorant swipe at aspiration” by restricting inheritance tax relief on business property and taxing farmland.
The changes to inheritance relief on business property mean family firms passing on assets of more than £1million will be charged 20 per cent tax from April 2026.
A 20 per cent levy on farms worth more than £1million has also been introduced.
The changes were part of a budget that raised taxes by £40 billion to fund major cash injections for public services and fill what the Chancellor claims was a “black hole” in the public finances left by the previous Government.
Sir James wrote in The Times: “Rachel Reeves is killing off established family businesses, and any incentive to start new ones, with her 20 per cent Family Death Tax, levied each time a family business passes a generation.
“The very fabric of our economy is being ripped apart. No business can survive Reeves’s 20 per cent tax grab. It will be the death of entrepreneurship. Think of the jobs for “working people” that will be lost — or never created.
“Family businesses are an antidote to the short-termism which is the blight of the British economy and of which everyone complains.
“Family businesses are in the blood: a shared journey between the business and the family across the generations. Britain will sorely miss them.
“Every business expects to pay tax, but for Labour to kill off homegrown family businesses is a tragedy.
“In particular, I have huge empathy for the small businesses and start-ups that will suffer. Labour has shown its true colours with a spiteful budget.”
It comes after Tom Bradshaw, the president of the National Farmers Union, warned in an article for The Telegraph that the unexpected move is fueling a mental health crisis among farmers that will force some to quit.
Mr Bradshaw reveals his team has been inundated with calls from elderly farmers who have been driven to tears and now feel they are a “burden” on their own families.
Labour councillors have said they expect the party to face a revolt from rural voters over the policy in May’s local elections.
The Treasury’s own estimates show the tax changes on farms are set to raise just £520 million a year by 2030.
With the NHS’s annual spending reaching more than £150bn, the amount raised by the farming inheritance tax change would be spent by the health service in a little more than a day.
By comparison, the increase in employers’ National Insurance – the flagship tax increase in the Budget – will raise £25bn by then, which is 50 times greater.
Appearing on BBC One’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, Ms Reeves showed no sign of reversing course and instead argued the public finances were too strained to keep the existing rules.
Ms Reeves said: “Last year, the benefits of agricultural property relief, 40 per cent of the benefit was felt by 7 per cent of the wealthiest landowners. I don’t think that it is affordable to carry on with a relief like that when our public services are under so much pressure.
“And of course farmers as well rely on good public services, whether that’s our NHS, our roads or our schools. That money will be put back into improving our public services and putting our public finances on a firm footing.”