Raising government revenue is a lot less popular than government spending, as the recent general election in the Republic will have reminded people, but the need for budget balance will reassert itself in due course.

The United Kingdom government faces a more immediate fiscal challenge than has been acknowledged in Ireland, and the Labour administration has set tough budgetary targets for the years ahead. With the election out of the way, the next Irish Government, whenever it takes shape, may have to do the same, especially if the unexpected boom in corporate tax revenue proves to be temporary.

For Labour in Britain, the first test of its commitment to keep borrowing under control has come from farmers, incensed at the prospect of lower ceilings on liability for inheritance taxes.

There have been big marches in London and extensive media coverage of the farming sector’s negative reaction.

Labour ministers have defended the measure, on the grounds that the amount of revenue at stake has been exaggerated and that the vast majority of farmers will not be facing significant bills, or any at all.

The Labour party had promised at the general election in July that they would somehow balance the books without wide-ranging tax increases, acknowledging that real incomes have been disappointing. But farmers have faced the same squeeze from input costs as every other business, and there are some problems specific to the agricultural sector. British farming has been adversely affected by the fall-out from Brexit, including, for example, diminished access for Welsh lamb producers to the Paris market.

Most farmers voted for the ‘leave’ option in 2016 and have not traditionally voted Labour, so there may be a certain dearth of political sympathy. Moreover, the UK farm organisations did not alert their members to the downsides of Brexit.

The UK has avoided the threatened access for low-cost imports from Latin America arising from the Mercosur deal, but one-sided trade agreements with Australia and others, negotiated by the previous pro-Brexit Conservative government, raises the same issues.

During the Brexit debate, and the tortured House of Commons stand-off which followed, the farm organisations in the UK were noticeably quiet and the recent agitation has caught Labour by surprise.

While opposition to the new government’s inheritance tax proposals has come principally from full-time farmers, the plans have also energised the TV personality Jeremy Clarkson and some prominent business figures with extensive holdings of farm land.

These allies attract more publicity than sympathy, since they are seen as exploiting a tax advantage intended for career farmers.

The apparent generosity of the inheritance tax allowances for farmers has attracted investment in farm land from people keen to find tax shelters, the same incentive alleged to be at play in this country.

There is a fundamental problem with the taxation on the ownership or transfer of assets, as distinct from income or payroll taxes which are levied on actual flows of income. It sounds fair to screw ‘the rich’, but if actual tax bills have to be met in cash, there may be categories of ‘the rich’ who do not have access to the wherewithal to meet them.

Public resistance to the taxation of residential property in Ireland, reflected in a policy of low residential charges, is in part due to the simple fact that homeowners may have substantial paper wealth, but not much cash income.

Inheritance tax is unpopular anyway and people worry about the capacity of their offspring to meet the bills, hence the promises from politicians to increase the exemption limits.

Asset prices have risen sharply over the last few decades, partly reflecting exceptionally low interest rates, and this drives the excessive valuations which apply to residential properly in Dublin and in parts of the provincial cities.

The same pattern is clear in the valuations of farmland in the United Kingdom, where farms can be valued at figures well out of line with the regular income, net of operating costs, that can be earned from working the land.

Even with direct payments, family farm income in Ireland is low relative to the valuations which can be placed on farms for the purpose of calculating inheritance tax. The latter is in any event a controversial tax, arising on transfer of assets where there has been no realisation, in cash, of the valuation assessed by the tax-gatherers.

The same is true where residential property, perhaps overvalued at today’s prices, is deemed taxable when bequeathed to family members. The UK budget envisaged lower exemptions for inheritance tax liability for business assets also, but at least in these cases the inheriting party would be assuming control of businesses with actual net cashflows.

Inheritance taxes are unpopular precisely because they will rarely match ability to pay, especially for farming assets.