There has been a wide welcome in the agricultural sector of the continuation of stamp duty relief for young farmers in Budget 2022, however overall the measures announced today by Minister for Finance, Paschal Donohoe and Minister for Public Expenditure, Michael McGrath, have been somewhat underwhelming for the sector as a whole.

The relief under Stamp Duty for young trained farmers will continue until December 31, of 2022.

Stamp Duty relief for young trained farmers provides for an exemption from Stamp Duty on either the transfer or purchase of land, where the recipient is a trained farmer under the age of 35.

Stock relief – which takes the form of a tax deduction in respect of increases in the value of farm trading stock – will also continue for young farmers.

However the flat-rate VAT addition has been reduced from 5.6% to 5.5% in Budget 2022.

For VAT purposes, a flat-rate farmer means a person who engages in at least one of the agricultural production activities in the state listed in Appendix 1 and whose supplies consist exclusively of either or both:

Farmers whose supplies consist exclusively of either or both agricultural produce and/or agricultural services and of one or more of the following:

Head of food and drink and agri-business with BDO Ireland Ciara Dillon told Agriland: "There was nothing ground-breaking in today's budget for the agri-food or agri-business sector. A lot of the schemes for agriculture got rolled over into 2022, which was expected.

"It's good to see the general stock relief is there until 2024 and has been extended and the young trained farmers and farm partnership stock relief has been extended to December 2022, together with the Stamp Duty relief for young trained farmers as well," she added.

"However, people will be disappointed to see that the flat-rate farmers' [VAT] addition has decreased from 5.6% to 5.5% for 2022. Whereas this is revenue-generating for the exchequer - and they've estimated that that is going to raise revenue of €5.8 million - the opposite to that is, that it is a cost of €5.8 million to the various unregistered farmers who avail of it," Dillon added.

A total €9.5 billion euro is set to be generated from carbon taxes up to 2030, with €1.5 billion of this going towards investments to target decarbonisation in the agriculture sector over the period.

"In this budget, none of the revenue that is being raised from carbon tax is being allocated to the Department of Agriculture to assist with these schemes for decarbonisation for 2022," Dillon continued.

"However, despite this, the Results-Based Environment Agri Pilot Project - REAP will continue in 2022. The funding for this is going to come from the exchequer rather than being directly funded by carbon tax," she added.