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?

‘Don’t forget that 49% of the population is below average intelligence and ( being brutally honest) its the exclusion of the children of these people that makes PS so successful’

Fuck me. Eugenics now? What a delightful lot private parents are.
Only people with limited intelligence would honestly believe that private school children are somehow superior to the rest of the population.

It’s 10% pay 60% of income tax.

1% of the population own 60% of the land.

I am talking about using wealth, contacts etc to legally challenge a tax change designed to be fairer to society as a whole rather than the use of private schools generally.

You mean a crowd funded legal challenge? The VAT policy has never been about being fairer to society and if you believe that then you are incredibly naive.
Anyway they have now exempted military families so with: state boarding, military, some SEN + state boarding then that's over one fifth of the Indy school population. Plus on track for 90,000 leaving/not starting indy schools. This policy will now likely raise £0 net.
But it was always about punishing indy parents, rather than improving state.

Bright parents who value education generally have bright kids, 60% of Drs from 7% of the population. Below average intelligence parents who think taxing education is a good idea generally have below average intelligence children, 40% drs from 93% population. It’s just a fact.

legally challenge

The thing about governments - which is a bit unfair - is they can always change laws that are successfully challenged. Just ask anyone who received compensation for the unlawful Workfare scheme.

The IFS include people being forced into the state sector and spending the money they save on their children’s education
on other vatable items in their calculations. That’s the logic; the children move schools, the state takes on the the £7620 education per child and the lucky parents buy a new car at a net loss to the state.

@Moonshiners
It’s got absolutely nothing to do with charitable status. The VAT position is an entirely separate issue. Only around half of private schools have charitable status anyway. The misunderstandings surrounding this issue and the nonsense being peddled is astounding.

If the Government cannot prove this “tax” will make money there is simply no proportionality. Which means it is no longer a real tax and is a deterrent. And as it discriminates against children with SEND and they have failed to carry out an impact assessment for those kids and to prove it is a revenue generating tax, I cannot see this getting through the courts.

Moreover, if the Supreme Court thinks it is in breach of the Human Rights Act how can HMRC actually force private schools to register and account for VAT? Prisoners not getting a vote has no financial implications. How can HMRC enforce a law which breaches the HR Act? They have to abide as a public institution, the private schools should simply refuse to pay it over it that happens?

Medic family here. Medicine is a very bad example to cite. The cost of a 5 year minimum Medicine degree makes Medicine prohibitive to many DC who do not have well-off parents behind them. Also, Medicine is notoriously competitive and historically DC of doctors were in a much more favourable position as medical work shadowing/experience was very relevant to the selection process and it was easy to secure if mummy or daddy were a consultant. Thankfully, at least that part has changed and applicants do not need medical work experience to reflect upon in their interview. Indeed, today only 28% of today's med students are from private schools, which, considering 20% of DC are in private 6th forms, the stats are not far out of kilter, particularly considering the privately/grammar school educated DC have the advantage of treading a well trodden path into Medicine rather than in many cases being trailblazers.

Personally I was hoping that the legal challenge would not just comment on VAT on private school fees for SEND kids but would go much further and name and shame the inadequate postcode lottery SEND system and force Central Government to start funding all SEND kids promptly and properly. And force them to come up with a workable plan and also stop denying the mental health crisis post Covid amongst kids and teens that they are just hoping to gloss over and not actually fund properly.
So here is to hoping the case will have far more implications than just VAT on private school fees and the numpties in charge will be forced to start funding state schools properly - which basically means actually dealing with vulnerable SEND kids primarily.

Fair enough, bad example in that case. I was going to go with knife crime as an example but thought Drs might be a less insulting illustration.

https://www.nao.org.uk/reports/support-for-children-and-young-people-with-special-educational-needs/

The Labour Party have basically been told that the SEND system is inadequate and their solution is to push even more SEND kids into an inadequate system and surely the claimant in the legal challenge can rely on this report as adequate evidence of the SEND system being in crisis? So exactly how are the Labour Party going to be able to defend their tax on kids with SEND? They cannot, they have ZERO evidence. They are simply using VAT as it is the only tax they could come up with and they cannot exempt kids with SEND full stop because VAT is not a tax on the end user. So there tax is going to fail, in my opinion. It is not a tax, it is a sham.

Charitable status should have been the first thing to go- and if the Tories had actually dealt with that then perhaps VAT wouldn’t be happening at all, but the gall of these businesses claiming to be ‘charities’ in any way has pissed off a lot of people.
Couple that with 14 years of privately educated knobs running state edu action into the ground = not many people feeling much sympathy for the ‘plight’ of the privileged being taxed

The ‘legal challenge’, as far as this a non-privately educated thicko understands it, is hilarious…

A Christian independent school thinks its closure would prove ‘discriminatory’. Despite the fact that there is a vast choice of Christian state schools available all over the nation.

Oh the horror of those poor Christian kids, having to mix with state school riff raff.

WWJD?

Will no one think of the lawyers ?

Education is accepted as for the common good and therefore charitable. Is that really what you take issue with? Education.

Seriously, you’re still convinced that in some way PS are responsible for lack of investment in state. There’s no link at all other than the £4 billion per year tax payer saving. You simply fell for Labour’s not very sophisticated propaganda ‘our children need teachers more than private schools need swimming pool’. Do you see?

Possibly a school in Devon is no use to a child in Liverpool?. Seems common sense not to tax schools into closure.

We British are clearly exceptional. The only ones crazy enough to leave the EU when we already had the sweetest deal to deal with our exceptionalism vs the rest of the members. And clearly we are also absolutely right to tax education at 20 per cent unlike the rest of the world.
We are truly special!
In fact, we are not. We are deluded and run by an increasingly worsening bunch of muppets running us all into the ground. But let’s keep chanting, we are right, we are special.
Thank God for the legal system.

The legal challenge under ECHR (particularly articles 2&14) is a about the enshrined "negative" ECHR right to choose a type of education that a human may want. The principle of plurality in education is held by the articles & the "negative right" means that the state is not required to provide every level of plurality or choice but cannot seek to prevent the right to access an education of someones choice e.g. a specific religious, cultural, SEND, gender [e.g. single sex) or specialist school focus e.g. sports/music/drama etc
The legal question then boils down to whether the VAT prevents (by additional taxation) someone from accessing their choice or negative right to plurality under ECHR - both the church school complaint & the lady with a SEND child have tangible arguments - & are supported by previous ECHR legal advice to the Blair Govt
The one to watch though is the ISC who will likely also seek to challenge the proposals under UK law: e.g. disability & age discrimination

Charitable status should have been the first thing to go

The Labour government have confirmed that they’re not changing the charitable status.

I do understand why private parents are up in arms, I wouldn’t want to suddenly be paying 20% more for… oh hold on, I already am!
Thanks to the selfish, greedy, privately educated born-to-lead Tories - absolutely EVERYTHING has gone up in cost including a bloody great hike in our mortgage, food, day to day living…

You’ve been manipulated into blaming children for the cost of living crisis. It’s quite concerning,

Hello Rishi.
Actually no, even Rishi isn't that....well....🤢🤢🤢🤢