More than private school fees will be affected by VAT

[MyNameIsFine]

Don't actually know if I'm being unreasonable here, interested to know whether this is true or not. Will the VAT on education also affect holiday clubs and afterschool clubs?

Have you seen the re-drafted legislation? I didn’t think they’d published that much information yet. VAT legislation is extremely complicated and it’s quite easy to end up with unintended consequences. Even the Labour Party don’t know how they’ll implement it, and they’ve already had to drop two previous proposals for private school taxation which they hadn’t thought through.

Private schools benefit from charitable status, which gives them significant tax advantages. These schools receive at least 80% relief on business rates and are exempt from VAT on fees. This charitable status means they do not pay the 20% VAT that is applied to many other services, including some state school activities.

But Labour aren't scrapping charitable status. They u-turned on that last year.

The pp in question was trying to scare you as part of a political campaign on here. Ignore. It’s for private school. Not clubs and dance schools (though as above, some already pay vat).

When discussing policies, it is helpful to think it through politically.

Do you think that politically a Labour government would want to make childcare more expensive for all parents?

Do you think this unintended consequence is so hidden that a team of legislators won't consider it, but also so obvious that a random MN-er has seen it? That even if it were to appear in the green paper there wouldn;t be an electoral outcry?

Because one is fee paying and the other is state provision. Easy. Stop scaremongering please. It’s desperate behaviour.

@Idrinklotsofcoffee It's an absurd policy. It's a kick the rich policy that totally misses the mark. Those of us that send our children to public schools (Eton/Harrow etc etc) won't be affected because both our schools have big pockets and protect those who are currently there (it's seen as more of a big family than a school) and because when you pay that amount of money you aren't scraping month to month to put it aside. I don't know any parents in either of my children's years that are looking to move and I have a long way to go in the education system so it's not like we are just thinking we can just grin and bear it for a couple of years. It's more like another decade.

If anything it will just make the whole system more elitist because the schools that will be affected are the smaller schools where parents are looking to provide care for their children who may have SEND or have other reasons to need or want smaller classes. And those children will end up in the state system putting pressure on where no more is needed.

Of course, it's interesting that there are those on this thread who are suddenly looking up and paying attention because their extra curricular activities might be affected. Don't you believe that putting your children in such activities is also rather elitist too and therefore you should be paying in full? Or again, is it fine for someone else but not for you. These things always trickle down. Always. Even income tax was just supposed to be a stop gap for the most wealthy originally...

Wrong.
State boarding the boarding aspect is paid for at a cost of between 10-20K by parents. So they are paying for the pastoral care element. You can't separate that from independent school boarding. They are both the same thing and require parents to pay for them.

Why would people be 'up in arms' about something that is not true and not going to happen?

How do you know how much thought has gone into it? There may be loads of detail in the manifesto. There may be loads of consultation after the election to make it work as intended. I’d guarantee one or the other of those because they aren’t chaotic like the Tories and their back-of-a-fag-packet National Service nonsense.
If there’s a class war it’s being waged by the Tories against anyone not in their little privileged club and its resulted in a whole heap of actual deaths.

I have explained many times why I started worrying about this. You keep accusing me of making things up, and it's getting annoying. Perhaps it has been made up, but not by me.

Rishi? Is that you? Do you remember you promised to stop lying?
It's getting embarrassing now. We've already had to apologise once today about lying oh and the DDay thing. Please just one day without a fuck up it's only a few weeks and then before you know it you can bugger off to LA.

Dispute your figure @twistyizzy in 2023 it's not 30% in Scotland, it's 4.1%

https://www.scis.org.uk/facts-and-figures/

Well, yes, that would be one reason they're not up in arms about it 😂Just wanted to get a sense if anybody else was worried about this.

It would be fairly easy for a government to make an exception.

Simply state something like: " VAT will be applicable where the services paid for are for the legally mandatory provision of education between 4-18". That would easily exclude holiday clubs, tutoring, extra curriculars etc.

It being charged for doesn’t make it not state provision. See also prescriptions and dentistry. It’s also not part of the school’s core business.

It has been made up, so you can stop worrying now.

Are you that woman in the QT audience who asked if VAT on private school fees means VAT on healthcare, OP? And are you, entirely innocently I'm sure and with no ill intent, going to continue asking if VAT on school fees means VAT on all manner of other random things which aren't private school fees, over the next four weeks?

Because they had to u-turn on charitable status.
They have had to state that state boarding is exempt because they hadn't factored those schools would be affected
They underestimated the number of SEN kids in private schools
They weren't aware that MoD may not cover the 20% VAT for military families

I have more examples

I have more examples

Lucky, lucky us.

State boarding fees are billed to parents, in the same way that private boarding fees are billed to parents. It’s very difficult to start differentiating that through legislation.

There have been numerous examples of unintended consequences with legislative changes previously.

They will just write a list saying 'not school x, y, z' as they do when any legislation doesn't apply to certain bodies.

Those aren’t examples of not thinking through. They are examples of thinking through and finding issues to solve. We get it. You think you deserve your fees to stay the same.

VAT and charitable status are completely different things. Many state schools have charitable status if they are an academy or in an academy trust.

VAT on income has been deemed to be exempt under EU rules as not charging VAT on education.

Nurseries provide education. State schools have nurseries that charge fees outside the funded hours and can include 4 year olds.