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…

Great. And the ones @ThinkingForward mentioned: insurance, travel, rent, food, books, children's clothes, domestic energy.

That would be great, to be paying the same rate of tax as everyone else for services we all use!

@Werweisswohin

"Private schools should not be exempt from taxation."

I still don't understand- how can a private school or for that matter any body corporate or charity pay corporation tax if they don't make a profit.

What are you basing the taxation on? Turnover, number of staff, how long it's been established?

It doesn't matter that it isn't altruistic. It matters what the actual real consequence is. Ie subsidising the state.

That's quite a varied list.
It's interesting you wrote rent but not mortgage.

They should be treated like any other business, not sure how much simpler to make this for you.

How do you think you are subsidising the state exactly?

Not necessarily - even though I don't have a child with SEN in any school ATM, I vividly remember how my DC1 with SEN suffered because of state school staff who made an autistic child look them in the eye to the point of MH breakdown so I can totally sympathise with parents who try to shield their children from all that crap but now have to make very difficult decisions due to the blatant populism of the elites.

Happy to add the interest part of mortgage. That's the bit which is a service.

@thi

@ThinkingForward had suggested harmonising VAT on all goods and services. Those are examples of other goods and services which are currently exempt from VAT, just like education.

@Werweisswohin

"They should be treated like any other business, not sure how much simpler to make this for you."

OK that's clearer- so any business that doesn't make a profit doesn't pay corporation tax. So in the example of private schools so long as they don't make a profit then they don't pay corporation tax.

Currently if they are set up as charities then they are not allowed to make a profit. Ergo neither a non profit business nor a charity will pay corporation tax. So removing the charity status from non profit making schools will make no difference from a taxation perspective.

By not taking up the £7k a year education which my DD is entitled to.

And instead paying for the entirety of her education (including the curriculum basics which the government is responsible for) myself.

I actually read today about a school that had been approached by a local council about funding places for children who are currently unable to be allocated a place in state schools. I'm very tempted to make a FOI request to find out how many councils already pay for kids to attend private school.

Not exactly. She applied for an EHCP and didn't succeed, but didn't pursue it through the tribunal. She lives in Kent, which is admittedly terrible for SEN, but they tend to give in when challenged on refusals to issue EHCPs - and the success rate for this type of appeal is around 98%.. It's understandable that she chose to go for the fee paying option rather than go through a tribunal appeal, but she must have known there was a risk that fees would go up, and she still has the EHCP option. She can't really argue that the state won't provide the required education when she hasn't used the avenues the state gives her for accessing it.

What do you think happens if the parent decides that they can't afford to pay the VAT? The state is landed with an £8k per year bill to educate them. You need three children in private school paying VAT on average private school fees to cover the cost of one non-SEN child choosing state over private. This is for the policy to remain cost neutral.

As it's estimated that over 90% of current private school pupils will stay where they are, it's hardly going to be difficult to achieve that 3:1 ratio you suggest is necessary.

The government is planning on using the money raised from the VAT to be spent on employing 6500 teachers. That sounds amazing, until you realise that there are 30000 schools in the uk (not including independent),
The wealthier families that can’t afford private schools will move to the best areas and the house prices will rocket and the ones who desperately need the decent schools won’t get a look in.
It was incredibly short sighted of Labour and those that think it won’t affect them are kidding themselves.

That's somewhat irrational. Do they also complain about other areas where we impose tax but they don't? I'd be prepared to bet it's pretty much a swings-and-roundabout situation, i.e. that there are things which we have to pay tax on in France where we don't in the UK.

The government could argue easily that all the VAT could be absorbed and the same education provided, just cutting back on some bells and whistles.

And they would have a point. I went to a private boarding school. I don't want to sound all four Yorkshiremen about it, but when I was there it had inadequate heating, the furnishings were pretty spartan, the food was awful, but the teaching was generally OK apart from the mad sadistic games teacher. It's gone upmarket subsequently and is now very comfortable, wins awards for its food, and has spent a fortune on music, theatre and art facilities, a spiffy new library, a lovely swimming pool and gym, and computers for every pupil - and has still managed to double its numbers. I'm quite sure they could simply cut back on their next big building project and keep their fees low if they really want to.

Exactly? Given that a subsidy is a part payment for something, and that the amount that every country spends on education to achieve its outcomes is reckoned (for example by the OECD) to be composed of two parts - one paid by the state and the other privately - then isn't it obvious?

Estimated by whom? IFS? did they run any polls?
I'm seeing much higher numbers in my PS, close to 30%.

As said multiple times - parents will beg, borrow and steel to keep DCs till the next transition point but will move to state then. Labour intentionally made it in Jan to be able to say that nobody's moving. The real impact will start from Sep 25.

It's the same as the right to family life. The government isn't required to give you a family - that's up to you. But they're not allowed to unreasonably prevent it.

But they aren't unreasonably preventing it. They are saying that parents are absolutely permitted to continue sending their children to private schools, but they may have to pay a bit more. If you can claim that that prevents parents from accessing private education, you would have to get over the problem that the differentiation between, the cheapest and most expensive private boarding schools is a whopping £40K per year, and no-one challenges the government for failing to make it easier for everyone to send their children to the likes of Eton and Brighton College.

Why would they complain about other areas? The French simply value education and don't want their expat children to lose access to it and become uneducated and uncultured dimwits just because the current set of British elites was allowed to play the card of faux socialism.

French culture has always been superior and it shows 😂

A Tribunal right now takes a year. If the LA refuse to assess, and you appeal, that's one year. They have a further 24 weeks in theory to assess in (but ignore that, despite the law being very clear, and take around another year right now). They can then refuse to issue, which is another year. They can then, when made to issue, issue a shitty useless EHCP which means yet another appeal.

By that time, it's 4 years on.

Not necessarily. Refusal to assess appeals are dealt with on the papers and take considerably less than a year to be heard, as the tribunal can slot them in to be dealt with whenever they have a free panel because, for instance, another case has settled at a late stage. You can also get expedited hearings in certain cases, for example if your child is out of school, and processes like Judicial Alternative Dispute Resolution can speed things up also.

That's fine, then, they can carry on not charging VAT on education on the superior education in France and ignore what the UK does.

Only the UK does it to French kids as well as everyone else. Lycée Français is PS.