A desperate farmer spent his final hours writing down his thoughts on how to protect the future of his business from the government’s inheritance tax raid before taking his own life, it can be revealed.
John Charlesworth’s son found a handwritten note where the Yorkshire farmer had jotted down his ideas for how best to leave the farm to his children.
The musings, left on a clipboard immediately beneath a suicide note, included questions for the family’s solicitor covering costs, capital gains tax, protected agricultural exemptions and what gifted assets could be sheltered from inheritance tax under the seven-year rule.
On the budget, Mr Charlesworth, 78, wrote: ‘Is it possible to execute before law changes’, and wondered ‘how long’ it would take for the policy to charge inheritance tax on farms worth over £1million to be implemented.
Son Jonathan – who found his father hanged in a barn on the morning of Tuesday, October 29, the day before Chancellor Rachel Reeves revealed the scrapping of inheritance tax relief for most farmers – said: ‘The suicide note was on top of the clipboard and this was underneath it.
‘That’s what he was working on before he went and did it. It’s fairly obvious what was on his mind.
‘He was very methodical, my dad. The police have taken the suicide note and I tried to give the note about inheritance to them as well. It’s got his workings out, how to save the farm from potential inheritance tax.’
Yesterday, an inquest was briefly opened and adjourned at Sheffield Coroner’s Court into Mr Charlesworth’s death at the farm in Silkstone, Barnsley, South Yorkshire.
Mr Charlesworth Jr, 46, said his father wrote in the suicide note that he had ‘left some beers in the fridge’ for his son, adding: ‘I appreciate all the help and support you’ve given me.’
Further lines were written to his daughter, who is not involved in the farm, which has been in the family since 1957.
Although Mr Charlesworth SR, was sole carer for his dementia-stricken wife Carolyn, 73, his son said he was ‘talking more about inheritance tax lately than about caring for his wife’.
Mrs Charlesworth has had to be placed in a care home.
Mr Charlesworth Jr revealed he found his father after receiving a call from a family friend who had been unable to get hold of the pensioner on the phone.
He said his ‘first thoughts’ were shielding his youngest children – a son aged seven and daughter, nine, who live with him – from the tragedy, so called their mother to take them to her house before emergency services arrived.
Father-of-four Mr Charlesworth Jr, who keeps 40 cattle and 120 sheep, said he still hopes to be able to leave the 70-acre farm to his children one day, with his youngest son particularly interested.
‘Even his teachers say all he ever talks about is farming and tractors. He’s like I was at that age,’ he said.
Although the farm, which also includes a small camp site and shepherds’ huts, is worth approximately £2million on paper, Mr Charlesworth Jr’s income last year was under £15,000, equivalent to an hourly rate less than half the minimum wage.
He added: ‘I put in up to 60 hours a week, so that works out at less than £5 an hour and I only had four to five nights away with my partner.
‘I haven’t had a week’s holiday for 13 years – yet the government is asking farmers to fund the pay rises of train drivers, nurses and doctors and everyone else.’
‘The most I’ve ever made was £30,000 a year, when my dad was running the farm and I had another job.’
Mr Charlesworth Jr told how he has been left ‘numb’ and ‘exhausted’ by the tragedy.
Earlier this week, he said Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer has ‘blood on his hands’ over his father’s death.
Calling on the government to rethink scrapping of inheritance tax relief for farms worth over £1million – which campaigners say will lead to the break-up of family farms to pay death duties – he added: ‘Rachel Reeves’s husband Nicholas Joicey is Second Permanent Secretary at the Department of Food, Environment and Rural Affairs.
‘She should have better knowledge of what will happen as a result of this policy.’
