Vat On Private School Fees.

[Deskdiary]

Contary to what many people think, sending kids to private school is not the sole preserve of the rich, and many people scrimp and save to be able to do so, so a 20% increase in their fees could make it unaffordable resulting in state schools having to take their kids in. It has been reported that 40% of kids could be withdrawn from private education. There's 550,000 kids being educated privately, so state schools will need to find places for an additional 220,000 kids. Plus this mass withdrawal could send some private schools under.

 

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/tax/private-school-parents-pulling-children-out-labour-vat-raid/

 

The lack of VAT on private school fees is not, as some on the Left see it, a tax break for the rich.

 

Why is he going to do this?

[barry1010]

Why are parents pulling their children out now, before anything is determined?  Seems an odd time of year to be removing children from school.

If this does come to pass, private schools could consider lowering their fees to compensate.

I have always considered private schools as providing benefit to state schooling.

[ToraToraTora]

Labour hate anything but dockside secondary modern for all our kids. Not their own of course. They hate grammer schools as a way for bright poor kids to make the most of their education. Labour love to portray themselves as the party of the working classes and the poor and they are in a way, they are determined they'll stay that way. They hate asperation, endeavour, progress anything that makes a poor kid successful. Then they brain wash them so they vote for them when they get older.

[ToraToraTora]

...fortunately some of us see through that. I am from the poorest background you can imagine. I was fortunate to have lived through a time when TGL was in power. She taught us to be self sufficient, to train to get a career, so save to build a life to contribute to our society. Thanks Maggie, you were an inspiration to many of us. Thatchers children? you bet!

[Old_Geezer]

Whoever it's for, it's still a tax break. Education institutions should not be see as charities but commercial concerns, and should stand on their own two feet. And the state system needs to be capable of teaching all kids needing education.

[barry1010]

Maybe parents should be paid the cost of state school education if they opt out and privately educated them.

Good idea?

[ToraToraTora]

No, terrible idea. Should the NHS pay people who go private? Think it through.

[barry1010]

I'm not suggesting it's a good idea, but it's a better idea than labour's

[Old_Geezer]

No. Education is a citizen right for the individual to have provided by society. If one opts out, believing it'd be better for your offspring, it doesn't absolve one's responsibility to fund the state; opt out but go pay the additional fees yourself.

[barry1010]

I've just remembered the last operation I had was in a private hospital, got exactly the same treat as all the other patients, paid for by NHS.

[ToraToraTora]

10:23 no it's a much worse idea than Labour's.

[andy-hughes]

It's spiteful envy, and it's playing to that emotion in Labour voters.

It's an appalling idea, and flies in the face of the aspirational culture that Starmer claims to promote.

[davebro3]

VAT on school fees is a BAD idea if it raises less in tax than it costs the state to fund the education of those pupils no longer able to afford going private.

I suspect Labour would like to see private schools abolished (except for their own children of course!).

[New Judge]

“Whoever it's for, it's still a tax break.”

How is it a “tax break”. It’s no more a tax break than making Jaffa Cakes zero rated is:

https://www.theaccessgroup.com/en-gb/finance/resources/master-vat-on-expenses/vat-treatment-rules/

VAT is an iniquitous tax anyway which sucks huge sums from the economy simply to administer it (but that’s for another thread). But to add tax to school fees, many of which are met by parents working their socks off and making sacrifices to give their children the best start they can, in simply beyond the pale. 

Like healthcare, education in many parts of the country is abysmal. The Socialst dogma is that only the State can and should provide these. That would be OK if the State was capable of doing so. But very often it isn’t. That’s where the private sector comes in – and where a better job is usually made of it. The government should be grateful that the parents of more than half a million children do not call on its services to educate them. Instead Labour treats private education provision as something to be punished by penal taxes. Par for the course.

[ToraToraTora]

[brainiac]

It's just party-political dogma and points-scoring, which will raise a piddling amount of money and hurt hard-working parents.   

Who can forget the awful Diane Abbott railing against private schools, then, when the time came, sending her son to one.

[douglas9401]

Is Diane Abbott the new Hitler?

Other useless, hypocritical politicians are available.

[Old_Geezer]

Cakes are zero rated so a jaffa cake is zeto rated.

There's no excuse to zero rate an educational establishment. The State supplies that service anyway and so has no need to subsidise a private industry.

[Old_Geezer]

...zero...

[davebro3]

Dunno what Jaffa Cakes have got to do with it - why are cakes zero rated but biscuits not? VAT was the creation of the devil!

[youngmafbog]

//so has no need to subsidise a private industry//

How is it a subsidy? Unless you are an out and out communist of course.

//private schools could consider lowering their fees to compensate.//

You dont have a clue of private (not public) schools operate do you?   Of course they could stop the bursaries for the poor I suppose but other than that often the difference between make or break is down to half a dozen pupils.  And staff tend to be lower paid already.

 

All this is simply the politics of envy.