Farm-restructuring relief gets welcome approval at last

Last year’s Budget introduced a special relief in respect of capital gains tax on the purchase and sale, or exchange, of agricultural land.

The new tax relief wipes out underlying capital gain on the sale of land, where the proceeds from the sale are reinvested in the purchase of other “qualifying” land, or in cases where land is exchanged by an owner for other land.

The relief may be most appropriate where a farmer has an outside block of land sold to enable him to buy a block of land closer to his main farming base.