VAT on fees, technical question about consultation

[Vatqueenquestion]

Not stating an opinion either way on the VAT question.

The consultation document has a single email address to use to email responses to the 5 questions being consulted on.

My query is whether this is normal practice for government on this type of consultation. How can they know who exactly has responded to the consultation using this method? How can they avoid spammers? How can they gather data accurately? Maybe this is standard though?

What consultation?

It's entirely standard. Sometimes, they say they prefer an online form but I think they have to accept written responses by post/email. I've always assumed there's some junior member of the team weeding out the obvious spam and which are clearly bollocks.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/vat-on-private-school-fees-removing-the-charitable-rates-relief-for-private-schools

It's happening from Jan 2025 then. I didn't know about business rates as well. So many small independents are going to close. Policies like this are so sad when we as a nation destroy anything which is good.

Normal.

They usually comment in the results of the consultation if a large number of replies all say the same thing (i.e. copy paste responses).