JCB charmain Lord Bamford’s son Jo says Britain risks losing one of its major success stories to the US due to preferable tax rates there.
The heir to JCB’s vast manufacturing empire has warned Rachel Reeves’s Inheritance Tax policy could force the UK-based business to move to America. From April, only the first £2.5m of a business’s assets is eligible for tax relief after the owner’s death; the rest is taxed at 20%.
But JCB chairman Lord Bamford’s son, Jo, says Britain risks losing one of its major success stories to the US due to the US’s more favourable tax rates. He said the family tax is a “real problem” and the firm, quite is headquartered in Staffordshire, could “quite easily become an American business”.
JCB is a prized British manufacturing firm (Image: JCB)
The heir to the JCB empire has issued a warning to Rachel Reeves. (Image: Getty)
He told City AM: “I love being in Britain.
“I love being here. I love our factories. But I would say to a political party of any stripe, there’s only so much you can ultimately do.”
Mr Bamford, who is on the board of the company his grandfather founded in 1945, said JCB could consider leaving Britain due to the inheritance tax levies faced by family businesses under Labour.
The threshold had initially been set at £1million, but the Chancellor Rachel Reeves was forced into an embarrassing climbdown amid outrage from farmers.
“When you’re hunting down family businesses or farms or any those two things, it is quite contentious, but you want people to hold on to these things long term.”
Farms and family-run businesses like JCB had previously been shielded from the tax, with reliefs allowing them to be passed down through the generations.
But they were targeted by the Labour government in the 2024 Autumn Budget in a bid to make the system “fairer” and reduce “generous” tax breaks enjoyed by large estates.
The move came amid concerns that the existing policy was vulnerable to abuse by the super-rich, who could shield wealth in agricultural land purchases and sidestep inheritance tax.
A Treasury spokesperson said: “We’ve listened and raised the relief threshold to £2.5m to protect more small family businesses, while ensuring the largest make a fair contribution so we can deliver support for families and businesses, including cutting the cost of living.”