Readers’ forum: Landowners

My clients are a husband and wife farming partnership who are considering gifting an area of land to their son who is not involved in the farming business. On that land immediately adjacent to a road the son intends to build a house that he will occupy as his main residence. It has been indicated that a ‘reasonable’ planning application would be approved by the local planning department but no application has yet been made.

I believe there will be no stamp duty land tax since the transferor is an individual and there is no consideration. However I think there will be a deemed (exempt) supply for VAT purposes.

For inheritance tax purposes the gift would be a potentially exempt transfer (PET) for each parent but agricultural property relief and business property relief would not be available in the...