To think that people who agree with VAT on private school fees but not on university fees, are hypocrites?

[Blanket601]

If Labour add VAT to private school fees, they should also add VAT to university fees. Or no VAT on either. The principle and rule, should be the same.

Why is only private school education being platformed. I think we all know why.

I have lived in a few places and more choice is rarely a bad thing when it comes to boosting standards. In Toronto there are a few different types of school option, some for example teach principally in French others in English. Across Europe there are quite a few which teach in English.

One big disadvantage of private is longer school holidays to cover generally. This is where more competition could improve the options.

In general having a bigger conversation about education provision as a society may help.

If there was a kind of cap or withdrawal rate of funding above a certain fee level then this may provide a platform for pupil premium to be boosted.

Are these schools day, boarding or both ?

Picking up on the healthcare front then both the Netherlands and Norway have an "excess" which you pay for primary care. Norway it's annual and state run including prescriptions. Netherlands is a compulsory insurance scheme. Many of the insurers are mutuals.

Germany you have more of this porting system, which is great in one way but it is quite time intensive as you have to organise your own care.

Poland and France both have a compulsory insurance system but covering much more of the system and you pay and reclaim typically. Rather than just hitting the excess and not paying anymore.

Looking again at healthcare and seeing if we could get dentistry closer to the NHS would seem to be beneficial, even if it was £10 to see a GP as a result.

@Kandalama

Mainly day schools the (European) international schools which teach in English often have boarding as an option.

There are quite a number of boarding options in Norway due to geography. A friend's daughter chose a boarding school as it suited her better, that's partly state funded. Another friends sons went to the local international school as she preferred the IB curriculum, and for them to be taught atleast 50% in English. A colleague went to boarding school when she was growing up in Norway was it was 5 hrs mainly by boat to school.

In South Africa there’s a huge gulf between private schools and state schools. In India it’s the same. The uk is much closer than some countries.

It sounds really diverse which is amazing.
However
Interesting to note everyone pays 22% tax on all earnings as well . ( No mucking about with different taxes based on earnings or how you earn it so much easier ) plus employers pay tax on employees earnings.

Im amazed the country can afford it

nb. I haven’t looked at other countries taxes so 🤷‍♀️

Norway has quite a lot of money pouring out of oil

Only 4% of the money earned on oil can be used as part of the national budget. The rest is invested.

Errr it's not quite that straightforward to start with there is 25% vat. Cars are broadly double the price. There are tax bands like the UK but the amount you can earn before paying tax is very very small. ( Circa £1000). There is also a wealth tax which creates some really strange incentives and has killed off manufacturing business (as you get taxed every year on the machinery you bought to make your business more efficient).

There are still childcare challenges, so free nursery places are in theory available but they are very difficult to get if your child is born in certain months. ( Atleast around Oslo).

Entitlement to unemployment, pensions etc is based on contributions.

Anyway more my point is that having some choice and being able to port the money in education creates much broader choice. There are some limitations with this you have to be resident.

You could say that about someone who buys a new vehicle instead of using public transport?

Schools need a certain amount of money to run, irrespective of pupil numbers, that £8k shortfall would need to made up by the tax payer, meanwhile your kids get a (subsidised) fantastic education.

Once again, be thankful you ve got a high paying job and pay your taxes, i ve recently had to pay quite a bit of stamp duty, completely unfair imho BUT i don't start numerous threads on it, taxes help to make for a fairer society & i'm a lot more fortunate than someone who has to rent!!!

Oh, well that’s ok then. When thinking about the most successful education models in the world those are probably the 2 that most people think of… not Finland or Sweden or any of those other countries that have allegedly cracked the code to good, fair, tax payer funded schooling.

“Once again, be thankful you ve got a high paying job and pay your taxes, i ve recently had to pay quite a bit of stamp duty, completely unfair imho”

@Absolutely45 - would you be happy to pay another 20 per cent extra on your stamp duty then?
Plenty of people move just for schools and into catchments. Should we charge those who can as well and then add the extra to the education budget? And maybe those using grammar schools as well?

I mean I would be happy to pay a bit. If you are going to ask private school parents to pay more, maybe those of us who can should all pay a bit more towards state education. Seeing that they really need it. Personally I am also quite annoyed that my DCs schools get really very low funding nationally speaking.

2 points.

1. Universities and private schools not having VAT are not comparable for all the reasons previous posters have mentioned.

1. I am fully for this change, however I think children already in private schools when the law comes in shouldn't have to pay vat on the rest of their education. I don't think children being pulled out of schools they're already in is a sensible option.

Really, it's pretty clear you don't have much experience of Sweden. In the larger cities the accomodations to the inclusive agenda has created huge divisions in communities and education.

Finland culturally is very different to well most places.

The Jante law culture is much stronger in Norway than Sweden.

This really reflects a couple of points
A) sdlt is badly designed but not really in scope of the thread. Capital gains with a link to building efficiency would be more sensible
B) people will be happier to pay tax if they get some direct entitlement or benefit from it. The move to means testing is pretty much the opposite of this.

Schools need a certain amount of money to run, irrespective of pupil numbers, that £8k shortfall would need to made up by the tax payer

If I chose a state school, it would cost the taxpayer £8k. This funding will need to be found when parents are forced to leave the private sector.

meanwhile your kids get a (subsidised) fantastic education.

My children’s education isn’t subsidised at the moment as it’s not costing the taxpayer a penny. Even if £8k per child was allocated per child at private school, it’s no more “subsidised” than any other child at state school.

The point is we should either leave the system as it is (ie no VAT) or impose VAT whilst at the same time giving a state funded credit. There’s no logic for charging a parent VAT when they are actually saving the taxpayer money by not using the state provision. No one seems to have a problem with the NHS paying private hospitals to treat NHS patients.

I’ve recently had to pay quite a bit of stamp duty,

Private school parents also pay stamp duty. In any case, it’s not comparable to VAT on school fees as SDLT is far less than 20%.

Not happy at all BUT i accept it, i'm already paying some tax, you are paying nothing at all (on fees)

You don't pay to send your children to Grammar, what would you tax? it would be a charge.

We all, ultimately, benefit from better educated children & hence the workforce.
The Tories have messed up their stewardship of the economy and now we need extra taxes, i'd rather change how we tax unearned income myself, but Sunak is hardly likely to want to pay more than his current 20% on several million he "earned" last year is he?

As i said earlier though, i would like to see Labours impact assessment on this proposal first.

@Idontfinkso Do not say we have the largest inequalities then. We don’t. Sweden does indeed have its issues. There are plenty of rich people at many types of state school in leafy lane areas. Their money buys them catchment. It’s still buying a step above someone else. Labour got rid of most grammars. Didn’t do as much as they thought for social mobility. Parents in the “just about can afford it” camp will have big problems and many are not rich enough to absorb costs that rise by 20%. It’s a vindictive policy and Labour love them. It’s like throwing a piece of meat to the baying Left.

No because (1) buying a new car has no social benefit (unlike school and healthcare) and (2) the state is not giving out cars to people at no expense (unlike school and healthcare) and(3) public transport is only partly subsidised not free fully paid from taxes and (4) is not a particularly close substitute for a car finally (5) the state doesn't give a stuff if you have a car but does oblige you to invest in education. That's why a car is VATable but education isn't.

Education is treated differently from VATable consumption because of the particular social benefits and because of the saved cost to taxpayers. Those are the economics and that's why no other country taxes education - it's a really bad tax.

We can't understand this tax unless we use good economics.

If you think a tax is unfair or economically harmful, and I agree with you stamp duty is also a particularly harmful tax, then perhaps you should start threads, campaign, etc. I will support you. The country needs more good economic insight like that.

There are better ways to raise money than stamp duty; there are better ways to raise money than by taxing education. The fundamental issue is everyone wants more stuff and for other people to pay for it. Nobody is honest enough to say if you want Finnish education (for example) EVERYONE pays a chunk more tax and you don't get there by taxing the rich.

Talk to anyone of a certain age in the industry.....the closure of the grammars was exactly what the private schools needed, and is a direct cause of the oversubscription and fee escalation of recent decades. In no other sector would a market analyst see a 93pc monopolist with captive customers and immediately conclude the market was shaped by the huge power of the 7pc. It's the other way around.

Private schools are so expensive because the state quality is so variable and because barriers to entry are so high.

It's so simple. We just need more good schools. Good grammars, private schools, academies, free schools, comps, whatever. Forcing a contraction on good schools, a contraction on a positive externality, a contraction of a sector that directly saves the taxpayer £3.5bn a year and contributes £10s of billions more, is utterly bonkers.

In those countries (Finland, Sweden) what you call "fair" taxpayer funding means everyone pays (much) more tax. At 30-40k in Finland, 10 percentage points more I.e. £3-4k less disposable income. They don't and never have imagined they would get their public services by "taxing the rich".

If you speak to Finns and Swedes, you also find they have a different attitude to their public service provision BECAUSE they ALL pay for it. They are very demanding of the producer and have no intrinsic exaggerated sympathy for it. If it goes wrong, they hold the producer accountable, they don't say it's the fault of "the rich" for not paying enough tax.

That's what "we're all in it together" looks like

If we are going to compare to other countries, let's look at the whole package.

Oh and none of those countries tax education. Because it's a stupid idea to tax education.

ummmmm i did say i wanted Labour to show their workings before this tax is implemented and that i accept Stamp duty - taxes are needed, more so than ever.

I disagree its a tax driven by envy, i don't see people saying the tory changes to Nom Dom are "Vindictive & throwing meat to the baying 'right"

Plenty of Grammars near me, plenty of Private schools too... none of which has helped Comps improve.

Central Govt slash funding because they rarely send their own kids to a state school, so don't care.

I agree we need some working. This hasn't been thought through. Ideally a proper HMT led consultation.

You said you accept stamp duty but think it's unfair. I am saying we should choose the least distorting, least harmful, most efficient taxes. Both stamp duty and education tax are bonkers, so why accept either? We all benefit if the tax system is more efficient.

To simplify, it's not good enough to say "this is a tax". We need to say "this is a good tax" or "this is the best tax". SDLT and education tax fail, badly.

Also, taxing non doms is a bad tax and I would say is throwing meat to the Left, not the Right. As a political gambit for the Tories, I think it's a weak one, but that's another story.

Honestly I think private school parents with SEN kids need to connect as a group and start bringing disability claims under any form of legislation they can find and as widely as possible as per the poster up thread who says s/he is not rich and was forced to do so. You will have loads of successful lawyers amongst private school parents and some will have kids with SEN so you just need to all find each other and get going. Sorry I can’t help because I don’t have a kid with SEN and am using state schools, but this is what I would be doing.

@MisterChips - our Government uses stamp duty because it is so easy to implement and the duty is on the conveyancer and Land Registry so no enforcement cost to them. Same goes for PAYE and same goes for VAT on private schools- they won’t cheat as a group and will pay.
Never mind the huge black market economy which would more than cover the whole education budget. Same goes for wealth tax - too costly to implement. Next in line will be substantial death duties for all as again, if you have to do probate it is easy to tax at that point. They will get their hands on whatever they can that is easy to get.
In addition, they won’t raise taxes - they just need to not increase thresholds for the foreseeable future. Fiscal drag all the way, oldest trick in the book.
You will need to use the legal system.