Doubts grow over Labour’s VAT plan for private schools

[Blanketyre]

Article in the Observer here:
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2024/oct/05/doubts-grow-over-labours-vat-plan-for-private-schools

I must say they've gone very quiet on it.

"Champagne socialism'. I think we'll get the full bingo card on MN stock phrases soon – here's hoping!

Well I've said it twice. Once today and once days ago ... so OK then.

Except it isn't "fair" taxation. Fair taxation would be making everyone contribute towards better funding for state education because everyone ie whole of society benefits. Making 7% of parents shoulder that burden when they don't even use state schools is most certainly not "fair". We already save the state £4 billion per year by taking the responsibility of paying for our DC education away from the Treasury coffers in addition to paying taxes to fund state schools.
Maybe the issue is the huge % of people who don't pay any tax and don't contribute to the economy. That's where your funding problem lies.

Ha, no, not envious. I definitely do not want to move to Dubai.

Sounds like it doesn’t it. Because despite being provided with evidence to demonstrate that the most significant indicator for a child’s academic (and other) success is having 2 parents in a stable family life, didi insists on clinging to the peculiar incoherent statement that private school education is the biggest social segregator of ‘modern times’.

Such behaviour is human nature. Confirmation bias, cognitive dissonance. All the buzzwords do apply in this case (and many like it).

Labour stated last week that they require 22 billion to achieve net zero. How do we know that paying any extra taxes will go into education or be grabbed for wind farms, solar farms rather than actually be invested in education as promised.

Rumours that Labour are changing sick pay rules soon too. Paid from day one of calling in sick. Is the private school VAT paying for that too?

’Even if it doesn’t raise money’. And if it costs money? That won’t improve poverty, and nor will it improve education, it will do the opposite. Is the point to improve standards, or to reduce the circumstances of everyone because, rather perversely, that’s ‘fair’? Because if everyone can’t access something, then no one should be able to?

Those that you wish to tax through the nose also need to consider that taxation to be fair, because they have the option to not just put up and shut up. It isn’t a threat that higher earners are leaving the UK and taking any potential tax revenue with them, they actively are doing so, and that’s a problem. It’s also a problem that middle earners are deliberately keeping themselves below the level where they’ll be hardest hit. The UK, like it or not, needs to attract and retain the wealthy.

Most likely, it is paying for everything else

‘Imagine shrieking ‘pay the VAT’ in someone’s face’

Imagine shrieking anything in anyone’s face. You’d be locked up. The only whining and bleating I’m hearing is from the private school parents.

But the state sector is full of segregation by wealth and privilege!

Isn't it 'more' morally wrong to have the taxes of the staff at Argos or Tesco paying for your child to go to a high achieving state school that their children would never get into? The good state schools near me you would need more than £1.2 million to be in the catchment for, at a stretch £800k for a flat. The other state school only has children from the local estate and has below the national average for phonics screening and SATs.

It isn't fair I agree that you need money for your children to be able to be in the right catchment area. But what can you do.

Watch this space for a delay announcement due to "administrative problems".........

The people working in Argos and Tesco will be net takers. Rest assured they are in poorly paid jobs so they are being subsidised. By the same group of people who have had enough of paying more than their fare share of tax.

HMRC have stated this already.

No from Labour

Really? Can you say where you saw this

I just read a depressing Guardian article saying the treasury have said it will go ahead I’d love that not to be the case

Just like the pensions tax. I said on here repeatedly - every economist on the planet has said it would be a disaster. Unless sponsored by Labour. People were convinced it was a done deal. Those evil higher earners you know.

You only need a tiny ounce of understanding to realise the impact on tax revenue, investment and the mess re-writing the monolith of the paye system and salary sacrifice. I even gave on here - the excuse they would use. Public sector workers and Drs.

It’s like everyone is distracted by dog whistle policies…oh wait! Welfare and sickness next, next logical step for them.

Net takers? how rude!

Let's be clear, as an independent school teacher, people like you are paying my wages, right? And yet here I am, able to claim tax credits/universal credit because my salary isn't quite high enough to lift me out of the range of benefits. Food for thought, eh?

The belief to abolishing private school is not driven my envy, it's driven by the belief of free, fair and level access to good education for all and to remove a harmful segregator

But the state system is anything but fair with level access to good education. And is just as likely to put in place 'harmful segregation' as the independent school. I can't afford to buy in the catchment of my best local school, the one I would prefer my children attend because the results are great. HOw is that different to a parent who pays for an independent?

They are. About time some cold hard facts are faced.

they are...what? your response makes little sense

Well yes it does, if you know anything about the economy. If you don’t, maybe research it for yourself?

I actually don't know anything about who qualifies for UC and when (so apologies) but I am taken aback that you're a teacher in a private school and you're paid that badly. I'm a school governor at a school very much on the cheaper end of the spectrum and our teacher salaries are pretty much in line with the state sector.

It’s very clear that most people who feel strongly about VAT on private schools
are envious of those parents who do send their children. I guess it’s a case of if I can’t have it, no one can. The sad truth is most children will continue to attend, the classes will be smaller and filled with children of even richer parents and they’ll be no improvement in state school education.

@Northerngal1974
‘..most children will continue to attend, the classes will be smaller and filled with children of even richer parents and they’ll be no improvement in state school education.’

Yes 💯.

But will people rise up and demand improvement in state schools?* *

Or even demand improvement in equality amongst state schools - because that is the real issue.

How is it that some state schools are superb, and some are dens of trouble and no expectations. Yet they all fall under a convenient banner of ‘state schools’?

You can bet without risk, that starmers’ kids don’t go to a school that resembles an inner city dump in toxteth. But all for one and all for ‘our children’ eh.. vomit