IT’S NOT A TAX BREAK! Education settings are exempt!

[LaceyLou82]

Fed up of Labour calling the VAT on fees a tax break! Ideologically this is so very unsound, we are talking about providing an education here.

Education is not taxed for a reason, in this country it should be a fundamental right.

As a nation vs the global competition we have this is totally a backwards step.

He could put 10p on income tax and raise billions!!! Foolish policy.

Such a misconception about Private School parents. This is an unfair policy.

There has to be another way otherwise what will come next? VAT on kids clothes, VAT on healthcare. What about VAT on gambling, why not that?

@SoupDragon

Except this doesn't make it fairer or more equal does it? Making it more expensive simply pushes out the least wealthy users and turns it into something only the wealthiest can afford.

But you could say that every single time private schools put up their fees above the rate of inflation which is every year so why is everyone up in arms now? Private schools are already much, much more expensive than they were 20 or 30 years ago even accounting for inflation.

@SoupDragon

Except this doesn't make it fairer or more equal does it? Making it more expensive simply pushes out the least wealthy users and turns it into something only the wealthiest can afford.

But you could say that every single time private schools put up their fees above the rate of inflation which is every year so why is everyone up in arms now? Private schools are already much, much more expensive than they were 20 or 30 years ago even accounting for inflation.

Not sure if anyone has mentioned it but there was interesting discussion about this topic on question time last night.
I’m curious to see whether SNP will have included this in their manifesto too. We’ll find out next week I guess.

What I gleaned from the panel and audience discussion is that private schools for SEN kids and Royal ballet schools etc will NOT be exempt.

And then they'll tax butterflies. And elbows. And reflections. And smells.

IT'S A SLIPPERY SLOPE!!! TAXING PRIVATE EDUCATION WILL OPEN THE DOORS TO LABOUR TAXING EVERYTHING!!!?!!

Wow, this game of "let's play fear-mongering and invent imaginary taxes" is fun! It's your turn again.

That is so sad for performing arts schools.

@HowardTJMoon if I was a Labour voter then yes I would be worried about what they might decide to tax next. It is a slippery slope if something like education is taxed.

At the moment, I really don't have the band width to worry about private school fees being taxed, or what else might be taxed and how much in the future. I suspect there's a hell of a lot of people that have more than enough to worry about without borrowing that relatively privileged bit of trouble.

Only a small number of PE parents will be affected. So what is a small % of 7%? As a guess, 1 or 2 %. Compared to 93%.

@fungipie @mbosnz the wider public needs to have the band width if they had the facts they’d realise this is as much of a red herring as Brexit was. It will cost us money.

Yawn another private school parent moaning

It’s a tax break, on a luxury, on businesses used by the very well off.
If I wWas in charge the first thing that would have done would have been the bullshit ‘charity’ status these schools have. and all the monetary, tax dodging benefits that brings.
Then VAT.

hell yeah

The wider public, those of us using state schooling - 93 ish % - and finding those schools good for the most part - don’t give a shiny shit if you have to pay more for a luxury and do not understand the sheer fucking PANIC private school parents are in because their child might have to go to a normal school.
From reading the many, many posts private school
parents keep putting up it seems your children are all talented, exceptional geniuses anyway so they’ll excel
aywhere. No?

Or is it the prospect of ACTUAL competition you all fear? When your speshal offspring have to be in competitive with more kids - because in my DCs school there are exceptional children everywhere. children who are amazing in - sport, music, arts, drama, academically, languages… harder for little George and Charlotte to be ‘top’ though, isn’t it, when there are more children to ‘beat’ to get the lead in the play or into the rugby team etc

And even worse for doubling the pain by turning it into two separate words

I was using someone else’s a PP’s criticism of me.

I have said what my background is, I am not from privilege. I’ve suffered a lot of racism and prejudice. We were a family of Labour voters. There are more Asians in Private schools. The bottom line is the wider public don’t see the harm this policy will do. Even when it’s explained.

Pure and simple, I've asked this on several threads and nobody has a good answer - if it's such a good idea to put VAT on school fees, why does no other country do what Labour is proposing?

The most comprehensive study on this was done by Baines Cutler for the Independent Schools Council. They concluded that private school pupil numbers would fall by 10.7% after one year and a by a further 6.4% over the following four years. This means that currently, private schools educate 615,000 pupils, and after 5 years there will be 510,000. This doesn't mean an extra 105,000 pupils will have to be accommodated in the state sector. Some pupils are foreign and as someone mentioned above, the population of school age children is falling anyway.

Some other facts to consider:
Private school fees have risen by more than 20% in real terms (ie more than inflation) since 2010. Private schools are thus raking it in, and parents were able to afford it.
Many private schools receive significant donations. Eton received £8.5m in donations in 2018 - worth £62,000 per pupil. Winchester School has reserves of over £500,000 per pupil. If the schools are charities, they can also reclaim tax from HMRC on donations as gift aid.
Private schools have a lot of scope to reduce fees so it does not mean that fees will be 20% higher than now.
Financial advisors are reporting massive interest from parents and grandparents of private school pupils for ways to finance private school fee increases from sources other than salary - such as re-mortgage and pension draw down. It is clear that strenuous efforts are being made to keep children in private schools so numbers may not fall by anything like the study above.

@jcyclops

The Baines Cutler methodology has been roundly criticised and it is certainly not thorough research. I encourage you to look it up.

I'm not saying this isn't true in your case, but it's incredible (really) how many very wealthy people on MN, whether it be on private school threads, "landlords are the real victims" ones, or the bi-weekly "we earn six figures but we're still poooor :(" thread, claim to have backgrounds of dire Dickensian poverty. Obviously, some very wealthy people have worked there way up from the very bottom, but MN must be rather unusual in this.

Yeah I was surprised to hear no other European country has did this. It seems like Labour are grasping at straws to bring in the revenue they want.

I don’t have kids so I have no bone in this fight other than I do sometimes work with children, mostly in the state sector but sometimes in the private sector too and I’m just generally interested in policies that affect young people.

I’ve listened to both sides of the debate and I’m not hugely for or against, but I think from what I’ve heard there will be some unintended consequences if it’s going to apply to places like performing art schools too.

I wonder if any money they do get from implementing this policy will be ringfenced so they can illustrate clearly how it’s benefitted the state sector?

Overall it seems rather experimental for want of a better word - and likely to be implemented and then dropped soon after with a fair bit of havoc and upheaval in between for the minority of private school students who will need to leave. We’ll wait and see I guess…

@MisterNorrell

I'd pretty much reckon every rags to riches story on here is fake, or taken with a BIG pinch of salt because posters have self attribution bias.

There is a poster here, who banged on for a long time about having come from a "very ordinary" background and how she had no help, just took herself to the library and found a job that would pay over 100 pounds an hour and then worked super hard to get there.

Turns out she's the privately educated child of a practice owning GP.

Also MN is full of Schrodinger's Private education parents, simultaneously very ordinary people who are living like monks with no luxuries at all in order to send their children private, AND at the same time so fabulously important and well paid that cutting their hours will cost the government a lot in income tax revenue.

Sure, it'll cost you money. You've got kids in private school. For the 93% of us who don't, it won't.

To compare it to Brexit is just as absurd as your claims that it's a slippery slope to everything having VAT added. Your hyperbolic ranting is actively making me less sympathetic to your fear-mongering propaganda cause.

Oh god this again. Please
make it stop. Surely everything that needs to be said has been said on one of the 75
other threads on this topic?