In 2009, Jeremy Clarkson bought a “farm” for £4.25 million, featuring a six-bedroom mansion with a swimming pool, tennis court, orchard, croquet lawn and five car garage. At the time he crowed he’d never have to pay any taxes on it. And back then he could easily afford it, making £14 million per year hosting “Top Gear,” probably the most watched television show on the planet at the time.
During the Thatcher years, in 1984, Inheritance Tax Relief was introduced so that wealthy landowners could protect their estates under the guise of protecting farmers. Forty years on, and it’s still in place.
Source: Hello!
Jeremy Clarkson, 64, joined fellow farmers on Tuesday in London to protest about the so-called ‘tractor tax’ that the Labour government is implementing. He was left in hot water when BBC journalist Victoria Derbyshire asked him: “Is it not about you? About your farm because you bought a farm to avoid inheritance tax?”
Victoria pushed him on his own comments regarding inheritance and the acquisition of Diddly Squat, and he clapped back with: “I wanted to shoot,” claiming that the inheritance tax situation is only an incidental benefit of the situation.
He has since clarified: “The only reason I said that is because I actually bought the farm because I wanted to shoot, but you can’t go around saying, ‘Oh, I wanted to shoot’ because then you get shouted at by animal enthusiasts.
“I jokingly said, oh, it’s just inheritance tax and now of course it’s come back to bite me on the arse, but it doesn’t really matter because we’re here to support farmers, we’re not talking about me.”
He said that to Derbyshire herself in 2021, but now says he was joking. In the same year, he also told Hello! magazine this:
“I’ve actually lived on the farm for many years, we had it for all sorts of inheritance tax reasons. The farm made no money, it didn’t cost any money, it was just a nice thing to have. It was run by a chap from the village who was a farmer, and then when he was retiring, I suddenly thought, ‘I can do that.'”
In 2010, this quote when he bought the farm was posted on the Top Gear website:
I have bought a farm. There are many sensible reasons for this. Land is a better investment than any bank can offer. The government doesn’t get any of my money when I die. And the price of the food that I grow can only go up. But there is another, much more important reason: I can now have a quad bike.
For someone who now says the inheritance tax doesn’t matter to him it seems awfully “odd” that he’s said the exact opposite multiple times in the past. Clarkson harumphed and got all pissy when the BBC’s Victoria Derbyshire brought it up.
🚨 NEW: Victoria Derbyshire asks Jeremy Clarkson if he’s at the farmers’ protest because he bought a farm to avoid inheritance tax
Clarkson: “Classic BBC that, classic… I wanted to shoot, which comes with the benefit of not paying inheritance tax” pic.twitter.com/ztUARwJSL5
— Politics UK (@PolitlcsUK) November 19, 2024
And Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber of Cats! fame and a 5000 acre estate worries about foreigners buying up English land if this Inheritance Tax comes in.
