Restaurant Takings vs School VAT

I meant to say that there was a sales tax before the intruduction of VAT
But the VAT made it uniform

PollyG23the UK started paying VAT when it joined the EEC in 1973 @ 10% we’re now at 20%,

When not taxing education is described as a tax break, you know something is very wrong.

private parent really will try to shoehorn VAT discussions into anything!
no, because the majority of adults aren’t cutting back on restaurants because they lost a tax break on school fees - they’re cutting back to pay for food at home, for energy bills, petrol costs, mortgage hikes and on and on.

VAT on private school feels will probably account for about 0.0001% of the restaurant takings being down. It's an utterly tenuous link. The biggest reason restaurant takings are down is that all economic and social classes are reducing their purchases. No-buy and preserving money are big habits this year along with cost of living crises. Also, the first couple of months of the year are always the lowest for spending across all sectors really.

Only 6% of kids go to a private school in the UK so no.

We spend considerably more than the VAT increase on eating out.

However, as seems to be the general theme on here, we have drastically reduced the eating out (and also takeaways) due to the hideous costs and falling standards. Now we will only eat out if it’s somewhere we know will be worth it. Whereas before it was multiple times a week.

Totally understand that the majority of increased costs of food are way out of the restaurants’ control but unfortunately it does make you more choosy.

7% of CHILDREN attend private school. About 1% of adults have a child in private school.

We're eating out less because a pub we liked has changed hands and the menu has gone from freshly made and interesting to mundane bought in. I'm not paying £15 for sausage and mash or chilli.

You might be right, but conflating VAT specifically on private schools with what is essentially a broader VAT policy issue and cost of living problem for the majority of the population, is misleading. It just sounds like yet another private school fees thread.

Only 7% of children receive private education. Allowing for siblings it’s only about 4% of households with school age dc so 96% of households with school age dc and 100% of households without school age dc are unaffected by this niche CoL increase. Everyone has been affected by food and fuel rises. All middle income earners are affected by wage stagnation. The crux of it is 20% VAT off the top makes many things simply unaffordable and a 40% increase in minimum wage over the last few years has disproportionately affected retail and hospitality. It’s “made work pay” to a certain degree but has made many basic jobs not worth the cost of having them done. Some restaurants are not taking walk ins now so they can just rota the bare bones staff they need for bookings. You don’t want 2 spare waitresses, a spare bartender and a spare sous chef propping the walls up on a slow night costing you £60 an hour between them - £420 over a 7 hour service “just in case it gets busy”.

You're quite right, I should have been more accurate/ specific.

Wow. Wish I had a holiday home in Cornwall and had skiing holidays I could release. I must be the absolute dregs of the private school parents, just with the one house and a job. The 20% sucks but I have to manage.

Also eating out is something the vast majority have had to do without for some time. Most people are worrying about heating bills not private school
fees.🙄

I think this is a ridiculous stretch to be honest and I was against the VAT on fees.

Lots of restaurant goers don't have children in school, Lots of restaurant goers have children in state school. It would be a teeny bit of thier potential customers.

I also don't know which restaurants were included but I live in a posh bit of surrey and lots of people with more money don't eat in certain chains much anyway. So if those chains are down it's not vat on fees. I could just about see a very pricy independent family restaurant noticing a drop.

What a ridiculous assumption. Only 6% are privately educated and most of those won’t even notice the vat on school fees.

Yes we know a couple of these people and they are spending the money in Spain, Japan, Dubai as now they can go on big holidays every year instead of once in a while.

Personally I have cut back on most of my coffees (used to be £3/day = :£15 minimum a week), lunches (sandwiches or home made over eating out) and dinners (we used to go out around 3-4 x a week but now go to less expensive places or est out 1x a week). I also don’t buy stuff unless I need to or it’s on sale like clothes etc. it’s not just VAT on school fees that’s causing us to spend less, generally all the prices have gone up so much that it’s getting too expensive to eat out all the time and just not worth it.

As I mentioned earlier, it is far from '7% of the adult population'. It is 7% of the adult population who have school-aged children - a much smaller percentage of the total population, as those with grown-up children and the childfree will not form part of adult population from which the 7% is taken.

They tend to be the families who were very squeezed anyway. The savings won’t just be spent on eating out. At least some will be going towards increased mortgages and COL, catching up with pension contributions, replenishing depleted savings etc. Some will choose to reduce their working hours or retire earlier than planned.

By 'particular demographic', do you mean the just 7% of the adult population? Because I think the news is probably concerned with what affects the majority of people, most of the time. And if the 7% are sacrificing a few meals out (are they, though?) while others are considering food banks and feeding their kids but going without themselves, then I rather think that puts things in perspective, don't you? The reality is that everyone is tightening their belts, which is having an impact on hospitality. And other sectors, too.

But what about all the kids pulled out of their private school and going to state school instead. Their parents have an extra 20k a year to spend in restaurants now they aren’t paying school fees.

Yes we are eating out a lot less however we are doing other things a lot less. Eg clothing, food, less travel, just cutting down full stop, so yes in a sense the money is still in the economy just going to VAT.

the only thing I would say is I have 2 friends who are GPs and they are not putting their younger kids into private the older ones are year 10 so they can’t move them now. As a result they plan on reducing to 3 days a week as they don’t need the extra income. I guess that’s reduced income tax and NICs too. oh and extra kids in the state sector. The older kids will move to our local sixth form.

YABU for the fact that the restaurants themselves are saying it’s due to NICS and minimum wage. They can see from their operating costs where their profit is down. If they are taking the same turnover and their operating costs are higher, then it’s not less customers causing the downturn in profitability.