Staggered VAT on school fees

[Starship09]

If you are in support of VAT on school fees would you be happy for VAT to be reclaimable for those already enrolled in a school until a natural transfer point?
for example, Ava has been at her school since age 4 and is now 9. She’ll have the opportunity to leave her current school and have the same chance to apply for state secondary school to start at 11+. If she stays at her current school VAT is payable on fees from 11+. Fees prior to this her parents are not charged VAT for.

This would allow the policy to be introduced with much less potential impact on individual children.

Obviously this is unlikely to be feasible for various reasons. I’m not a tax accountant! I just want to understand if people are so keen on this policy that they don’t have any concern for individual impact.

for what it’s worth, I’d prefer that private schools were abolished in totality and we completely reviewed education funding to provide the best opportunity for all children.

YABU for posting yet another thread about this.

I agree

What would you like me to start a thread about?

Anything that hasn’t been done 10x this week already?
It’s not even a variation on a theme, there really are multiple threads this week with people discussing their opinions on staggering the introduction.

I'm in favour of removing the tax-break on private school fees.

However doing so has the possibility of adding a noticeable (I wouldn't go so far as "large") amount of extra demand on state schools. One way to reduce this impact would be to stagger introduction.

This staggering could be by phasing it in (e.g. increase VAT from 0% to 20% in five steps of 4 percentage points each); or by introducing only for children not already at private school. You could argue either would be preferable, but I think on balance the latter would be preferable.

On the other hand, I'd be wary of a give-an-inch-take-a-mile effect - for instance, if there's calls/campaigns for an incoming government to do this and they do, will there then be calls to also exempt those who already have siblings at private school? To reduce the chances of this, if I was the incoming PM (or chancellor, or education secretary) I'd only offer this on the condition of the schools themselves covering the cost of VAT for any children not already at the school who have siblings who are.

To be fair, I just searched threads from the past week for "stagger vat" https://www.mumsnet.com/search#/?query=stagger%20vat&page=1&date=week&to&from - this is the only one of the 4 results specifically for staggering the introduction of VAT to private school fees.

Searching for "staggered vat" gives the same 4 results, searching for "phase vat" or "phased vat" gives no results.

I believe VAT will most likely begin to be charged in April 2025, this is what VAT experts are saying.

Vat shouldn’t have been 20% because the existance of private schools in some areas significantly relieves the pressure on State. I also think more parents would have been willing and able to pay thus generating more funds for the government if it was sub 10%.

Ffs another one of these! And I’m a private school parent too 😫😫

Based on this one, nothing.
You did ask.
(This was in response to OP asking what we'd like them to start a thread on - screen jumped and I must have clicked remove quote by mistake).

The local bog standard private school near here has £42m in reserves. Lots of others i've looked at have at least £20m.
On average they put the fees up 5% every year. They could do something if they wanted to.

And yes this is yet another thread.

I support VAT being added.
I could support it being staggered, but always with the intent of eventually reaching 20% (or whatever the standard rate is, should it change).
I've yet to see a convincing argument to retain the status quo.

I also support VAT being added.

I would probably support it being staggered (by allowing parents who had kids at school before it's introduction to reclaim it, subject to the caveat in my previous post).

I can think of one argument for status quo: every divergence from an EU rule makes it harder for us to ever rejoin. So even a divergence which is for the best (like this) should make us stop and think.