Restaurant Takings vs School VAT

Amongst other damaging things, last week Labour were forced to reveal in court:
The treasury predicted 54k students forced into state from independent schools. 10% of independent children is the widely accepted number at which the policy tips over & becomes a net cost to tax payers.

That 100 schools would close as a direct result of the policy.

That the January implementation date would be incredibly disruptive and damaging for children, especially those studying GCSEs and A levels.

That in certain locations the state system would be overwhelmed.

Basically they implemented a policy that would close schools, overwhelm state schools, be harmful to children and the tax payer foots the bill. Anybody still arguing for this policy is quite clearly the sort of person you wouldn’t want anywhere near children and has never been a net tax payer.

Nobody is discarding them. They are entitled to a free at the point of use education just like everyone else. What’s happening is that policy isn’t being driven for that 7%. As is the case for any minority .

There is no logic under the 'only 7%'. That 7% translate into about 800,000 children. Why it is ok for policy makers to be so dismissive about these children? Let's not forget, the impact is on the whole family, then the whole number increases.

However, using the discussion about the number of people being impacted to justify a spiteful policy is totally absurd.

Is 7% a cut off point? What if we are talking about ethnicity percentage? Or LGBTQ+ community percentage? Any subgroup of society that's under 7% deserve to be discarded, like garbage? Should we start talking about double tax all subgroups less than 7%, because all the subgroups don't matter?

Copied from ONS:

"The three largest increases since 2011 were seen in the number of people identifying through:

• "White: Other White" (6.2%, 3.7 million in 2021, up from 4.4%, 2.5 million in 2011)
• "Other ethnic group: Any other ethnic group" (1.6%, 924,000 in 2021, up from 0.6%, 333,000 in 2011)
• "Black, Black British, Black Welsh, Caribbean or African: African" (2.5%, 1.5 million in 2021, up from 1.8%, 990,000 in 2011)."

"The English region with the highest proportion of people who identified with a LGB+ orientation (“gay or lesbian”, “bisexual”, or “other sexual orientation”) was London (4.3%). In London, 2.2% described their sexual orientation as gay or lesbian, 1.5% described their sexual orientation as bisexual, and 0.5% wrote in a different orientation."

We pay private school fees but we don’t eat out because a 2 course meal with drinks for a family of 4 is usually between £100 and £150. Simple maths tells me that I’m better off using that to buy a week worth of food shopping. It’s not good value.

Quite. Despite @FairMindedMaiden ’s ‘magic of maths’ it’s obviously nonsense.

How condescending. I’m perfectly calm, I’m just pointing out you’ve shared something which patently obviously is daft.
There is absolutely no way 1 in 5 adults in the U.K. went to private schools for even a week or two.

It does seem that private school VAT is the new Brexit - it explains everything.

I don't believe the Ozempic explanation for lower restaurant takings - it suggest that Ozempic is causing people to buy fewer restaurant meals and takeouts. I suspect that people are cutting back on those things in order to fund their weight loss drugs - and doing so obviously helps their weight loss goals.

I didn’t write the article, try and calm down a little bit. Yes it is credible that 20% go to independent schools at some point. You are focused on the 5.6% in a given time period when a child’s education in the U.K. lasts 14 years on average. It’s like saying 11% of the population are smokers but 51% have smoked. How can that be you ask? The magic of maths. You’ll be telling me education tax is good idea next 😀. You may find this useful, but if not please take it up with the BBC and not me https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/topics/ztwx4j6

It also claims that over a third of 18-25 year olds have attended private schools.

I don’t know the overall figures, but it’ll be a fair bit more than the 7% currently using private education, for the reason given above.

1 in 5 and 1 in 4 men?

That’s 7% of the children currently in UK education. Many children don’t attend private school for the full 14 years, with some doing only primary/secondary/sixth form, or a combination. That’s why the figure will be higher when you look at the percentage of people who have attended private school at any stage of their education.

Maybe employ some critical thinking - do you really believe it’s credible that 1 in 5 people and 1 in 4 men in the country went to private schools? The numbers make no sense.

Restaurants are struggling because they’re too expensive and service & food quality is crap. They’ve massively gone downhill the last few years.

I just looked at the first source AI gave me. Happy for you to take it up with them,

Sorry, that’s just not credible. 7% of children go to independent schools. The percentage of A level candidates is higher (12.2%), but that’s largely because not everyone does A levels…how does that increase to 20%? It’s a very small survey taken by a rather biased source.
Edit: reading further down it claims 1 in 4 adult males went to independent schools. Surely you can see that’s quite obviously nonsense?

Or some actual evidenced statistics https://www.civitas.org.uk/2023/02/24/private-schooling-in-britain-a-snapshot/#:~:text=Pupils%20at%20independent%20schools%20consistently,per%20cent%20for%20sixth%20formers.

https://tutorful.co.uk/blog/private-school-statistics-uk-independent-schools

• 1 in 5 adults in the UK has attended a private school as a child
• This figure rises to 33% for those in London

Can you evidence this? I think it’s very unlikely that one in every 5 children goes to private school at some point.

No they don’t. When my kids were younger I literally would not have been able to do my job if reliant on the state system starting at 9am and finishing at 3pm every day. That is not even half a day in my industry. Many parents use private schools for the on site always available quality wrap around care to enable them to work in their role. It becomes self fulfilling though - I would work a lot less if I didn’t have school fees to pay - or go on more foreign holidays VAT on school fees is just another example of this governments mismanagement though. I don’t know anyone that thinks they are doing an okay job let alone a good one.

Of course the schools are also increasing their fees by inflation. Their biggest cost is staff so they are hugely affected by the ni rise.

the council also increased my council tax (a larger than inflationary rise) - maybe they could have just tightened their belt too.

Will NOBODY think of Gordon Ramsay?!

Well I’m retired and could afford to eat out but rarely due, mainly because the food is poor quality and the service whilst not rude is unfriendly.
I actually ate out at the weekend and the waitress pulled a face when I asked for a serviette, despite the fact the restaurant was half empty and she had just been standing around.

Prior to the introduction of the 10% VAT rate in 1973, its predecessor the Purchase Tax was set at 25%.

Also in 1973 the top rate of income tax was 75% plus a 15% surcharge for income from investments over a certain amount.