To ask if anyone is clued up on the challenge this week to VAT on school fees?

[feesss]

we went to look round a school this morning and we obviously asked about VAT and the lady showing us round said there has been a challenge this week so it may not happen? Is anyone aware of this? I can’t see much online about it?

Well I think there is, because I have spent months now reading sneery, spiteful messages about children who are apparently vile little snobs called Tarquin who deserve to have their lives turned upside down to teach their braying, equally snobbish parents a lesson. Apparently parents who use private are a) buying an unfair advantage in grades or connections or b) monumentally stupid because private ISN'T better in any way. I'm so sick of my two ND troubled kids being characterised in broad sweeps by people who know fuck all about the sector and look at Boris Johnson as though he is a typical example.

Labour have thought this through and they aren’t going to charge VAT for extra curricular clubs unless children learn anything. If children are interested in sitting in a room looking at walls in their free time after school then it will not attract VAT. No, I’m not joking.

www.gov.uk/guidance/charging-and-reclaiming-vat-on-goods-and-services-related-to-private-school-fees#:~:text=Extra%2Dcurricular%20activities%20which%20are,to%20be%20exempt%20from%20VAT%20.

I understand your frustration but can I politely suggest that you keep your anger for those posters. I am not one of them on any of the levels you have referenced. I was merely giving examples of the widespread switching sectors for NT DC, who make up the majority of DC in the private sector.

@BotanicalGreen sure, and I do apologise but as you can see this is pretty frustrating.

I totally can see that. It must be very difficult.

Not that many children pay tax though.

Children are liable for the same taxes as adults when it comes to income, capital gains and value added. It’s only once they turn 19 they will be exempt from the proposed education tax. It’s a strange one, I agree.

Oh bugger off

Once you turn 18 you are legally an adult

Just on the political front, both the IFS chap Luke Sibieta and Dan Neidle seem to have links to the Labour Party which have been exposed in the press. One would assume the press do fact check and have to fact check.

MN can verify behind the scenes that many of us mums have 10 year plus posting history and no political links!

‘Just on the political front, both the IFS chap Luke Sibieta and Dan Neidle seem to have links to the Labour Party which have been exposed in the press. ’

so? Don’t most people have a political affiliation? The whole policy was a POLITICAL promise. Of course it’s political.

I don’t think Dan Neidle had anything ‘exposed to the press’ - he’s upfront about being a member of the Labour Party and sitting on its disciplinary committee.

As for Sibieta - does having Matthew Pennycook as a close friend count as ‘links to the Labour Party’?

Of course, that’ll be it. I wonder how the conversation went -‘hey Luke mate, I know this has been our policy for years, but you’d be doing me a massive favour if you produced a report that said it probably won’t make much, if any, money for the treasury in the scheme of things’.

Even better, get the report funded by the Nuffield Foundation and the ESRC for that extra frisson of Labour influence.

In this fictional scenario, it’s probably more subtle along the lines of ‘it’s going to be tricky justifying an education tax, might make us look like a bunch of misopedists or backwards spiteful odd balls …especially after we voted to ban independent schools a couple of years ago. Maybe a report from the angle that although it will push parents into the state sector and cost the tax payer £7640 per child, it doesn’t matter as the parents will spend their would be school fees on something else we can tax. Did I mention you’re in the running to be my best man?’
Something like that.

I’m glad you’ve recognised it as a ‘fictional scenario’.

Have you thought about a career writing conspiracy fiction?

Ha ha, I did put too much thought into that. And yes I know it’s a coincidence that really should have been avoided,
My point is though, that the policy is blatantly purely ideological and should be presented as such…. not othering a group of children and whipping up anger to hide the fact that it’s going to be a costly policy (not just in tax payer funds),

@SabrinaThwaite - there was some controversy with Dan Neidle and BBC Verify very recently. Did you miss that? The more right leaning papers called him a Labour activist and some of the whistleblowing sites seem to be going further than that. No idea if that is true or not. If you want to go have a look, there are sites like GuidoFawkes on Twitter and their own site. I am not linking that here but go take a look.
Some of us read the far left and the right sites.
And the only reason I took a look in the first place is because some of the statements made about the human rights angle were a little too bullish, in my opinion.

Still, we’re in December now, and it comes in January? Seems like a done deal, and then we’ll see in the next few years who’s right and who’s wrong about the benefits or not.
As with most things the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle.

Can you remind us of the benefits?

@Araminta1003 You claimed ‘Just on the political front, both the IFS chap Luke Sibieta and Dan Neidle seem to have links to the Labour Party which have been exposed in the press. ’

Dan Neidle’s links to the Labour Party don’t need to be ‘exposed in the press’ - he is upfront about it.

The only BBC Verify ‘controversy’ is that it quoted Neidle’s analysis of the agricultural IHT changes and the Telegraph and Order Order flagged it up (no surprise there).

I haven’t missed anything.

BTW, I don’t count Guido Fawkes as a reliable source for anything - he is a right wing gossip blogger and click bait merchant. I am surprised that you do.

@SabrinaThwaite - well this is what he CLAIMS on his website and he is specifically quoting:
“What the top fact-checker sleuths over at Verify have failed to mention is that their “independent expert” is a senior and longtime Labour activist. Dan Neidle wrote in his successful pitch for election to Labour’s National Constitutional Committee in 2022:
“I’ve been a member of the Labour Party for 35 years and have been a ward secretary, ward chair and CLP Secretary. More recently, I’ve been the agent for two MPs and dozens of local councillors, and helped turn seats that were once marginal into Labour strongholds. I’ve practised law for 22 years and have advised candidates, MPs and campaign groups on electoral law, successfully fighting off attempts by other parties to use the legal system against us. I know the Labour Party rulebook.”
The NCC is “a senior organ of the UK Labour Party concerned with discipline.” Neidle was election agent for both Stella Creasy and Emily Thornberry, for whom he deployed such savvy electoral tricks as sending letters from fake neighbours urging a vote for Labour.””

Personally, I am going to be incredibly pissed off at the Labour Party if they lose in court on human rights grounds.
Because the sleaze etc and the hypocrisy undermines the whole political system.
It is exactly why people like Trump and Farage then get in. So like I have said all along, I really really hope they have very watertight legal advice that they won’t lose.