VAT on school fees - High Court Challenge.

[EverythingAllatOnceAllTheTime]

Labour’s plan to impose VAT on private school fees in January faces a High Court legal challenge over claims it breaches human rights law.

Lawyers have written to HM Treasury arguing the policy discriminates against special needs children and has threatened court action if it is not dropped.

Showtime…

Uh huh.

How? When my son's therapy alone outstrips the DLA, and we have all his other costs on top of the standard costs of child raising to factor in? You got a magic money tree to give me?

I forgot to mention that the only detergent they aren't allergic to is Surcare, that they can only use Eucerin products (including shampoos), and that neither can use loo roll, and have to use hypoallergenic brands of baby wipe instead, for sensory reasons. More costs due to disability.

The list I gave you is much, much more than their DLA. There is none left over - there's a deficit on the SEN spending already.

You can't spend the same money twice. Bolding words doesn't stop them being nonsensical.

This, in a nutshell.

For reasons contained in my previous post. In our case mainly because as two professional parents working very long hours it worked better for us to have all extra curricular stuff run through the school, also because my husband’s family have not used state education in probably 7 generations so state schools were entirely alien to him (not me, I was private secondary only), and because we could comfortably afford it on madly high incomes.

@Janedoe82

OK let's look at the numbers:

The VAT on school fees is forecast by the IFS to raise between £1.3 and £1.4 billion in additional tax revenue:

inews.co.uk/news/labours-private-school-vat-pledge-how-it-will-work-3107881?srsltid=AfmBOoq46aNhIAYKRKxMwUjIN6TuphYqhOFefXgQTGd5hODECDh_ADi3

The cost of a state education is £7,460 per pupil.

There are approx 620k private school pupils across 2,500 private schools.

On a simple analysis you would only need 26.8% of private school pupils to switch to state for the VAT to raise zero revenue or 32% at £1.5 billion.

However this doesn't take into account that private schools would then be able to claim VAT back on both current and historic expenditure.

It also doesn't take into account that many wealthy parents will have pre paid fees. So in reality it would only need to be around 15 to 20% of pupils switching to state to make it zero or negative tax revenue raising.

Clearly no one will know the true fiscal impact of this policy until after 4 or 5 years. But any tax that costs more to raise than it actually generates is clearly wrong.

To me it says everything that is wrong with left wing politics today, to support a tax policy that actually costs ordinary tax payers more in taxation and making them worse off simply to financially punish wealthier people from having something they can't afford.

Speaking of your previous posts, have you contemplated making a significant donation in respect of your historic ‘VAT-saving’ on your kids fees?

I assume so.

I do hope Labour fail miserably and sink in shame

I agree with much of this.

Also consider the actual prospects of delivering the promised 6,500 new state teachers….

No way will 26.8% or anything like it switch
very few pre pay fees and a good chunk of those are internationals
We can only wait and see what the effects are, as you say but it is in no way a given that it will not be revenue raising.

Noted, thanks.

What makes you assume that I was only referring to your particular scenario?

Why are you attacking people to make your point?

No - because having read their back story they clearly just don't want hard working class folk like us to mix with the likes of them so anything to keep as many of us at bay.

Why noted?
Why is it relevant?

I attended public school, could have afforded to use the same system for my DC but I preferred the ethos in excellent local state schools.
Keir Starmer was equally lucky with state provision for his children. So too were the parents of Rachel Reeves whose academic path exactly mirrors that of my DC.
Not everyone is this fortunate.
Though I didn’t select the public school system, I will defend to the hilt the right of others to choose without the financial constraint of VAT.

Have you written it in your book of “people I argued with and it didn’t end well?”

whatever makes you feel better I guess 🤣

Private school you mean?
Why should it be VAT free?

The fact you responded to my post, quoting me, and addressed me by name.

Any more questions? Or are you ready to lay the spade down?

15% won’t switch. Do you know many private school parents?

The most sickening aspect of tribunal is that many can't navigate the system to get in front of a judge. I'm 200% with you on that. I finished every summing up at appeal saying so. It keeps intergenerational LD families in poverty.

Nope never paid any fees..

I also agree fully re broadest shoulders.

I don't belive for a second the vat on indi will go back in education. I'm way to cynical for that. I'd love to see indi SEN schools have no market because state SEN is so good. But right now, its impossible. How can a non verbal child get no speech therapy until they start school? How can totally non verbal 10 year old never had any speech therapy as their parents are told it's pointless? Thise kids never stand a chance.

The vat won't go anywhere fixing this I'd bet my life. Let's see in five - ten years if any of the indi SEN schools rolls decrease. That's the real litmus test of the SEN crisis. Plus the safety value. Should be paid off by next December surely with all this vat?

Sorry Im very cynical. I agree totally in principle in the ideal world. In this country, sen kids get shafted as a country as a whole people feel more passionate about vat then the sen crisis. Where are the trending topics on the safely value crisis?

I responded to the content of the post, not your specific scenario, thus no need for the air of superiority or baseless spade comments. 🫣

It's not about the switch it's about those that won't start in the first place and those that will move at sixth form.

They will never admit the true cost of this policy but we will see the fallout starting next year.

Presumably because it shows that @Delphigirl subscribes to the 'someone else should pay. But not me." school of thinking.

State education should be paid for by the whole population using our existing means-tested mechanisms such as income tax.

Not by adding a hypothecated tax targeted directly at 'people we don't like', whilst maintaining VAT-exemption on education for people we do like, eg students, nursery parents, state-boarding parents.

An awful lot of the posts have unspoken ableism at the root. At a pretty basic level, a lot of people genuinely don't see disabled people as fully human.

If Safety Valve weren't targeted at disabled children it would be a national scandal - as would the ways the LAs now behave towards disabled kids and families. As it is, most posters won't even know what the term means, and will assume an EHCP denied means it wasn't necessary.

But if university education is a luxury, why do we need books at all? 🤔