Why are private school parents punished when they remove a financial burden from the taxpayer?

[FishPhoods]

My DC do not go to private school, if I could afford it I would.

However - this policy makes no sense to me. I'm a TA. The school I work in has huge class sizes and is overstretched.

Starmer is saying that the VAT he proposes to add to private school fees will be channelled into the state education system. However we use the facilities of the local private school (swimming pool, sports fields) two days per week for no charge. If they lose their charitable status we lose access to that.

Also any money gained from VAT will potentially be outweighed by more pupils joining from the local private - or pupils who would have potentially gone but now won't. It costs the taxpayer roughly £8k per year to educate a child in the state system - we won't gain anything like that from VAT to cover the "new" pupils we acquire from the private system.

The way I see it if the rich can afford to or choose to pay for their children's education it's one less burden on the taxpayer. And making schools more expensive just makes them more elitist surely? Financially I just don't see how this makes any sense - is it just a populist thing as people generally feel aggrieved that some have the option of private education when some don't, so it's a way to punish them?

Antiques don’t attract vat.

Education is vat exempt so presumably this includes extra curricular music, language, maths and English tuition, sports lessons.

When vat is put on private education then surely the schools could introduce shorter days and then have vat exempt extra curricular classes.
Employ some teachers as part time tutors.

Just thinking aloud here. But wealthy people always find an out.

Only over a certain threshold.

Antiques don’t attract vat.

Under certain conditions. If you bought a Ming vase on the open market you’d pay VAT.

Antiques, works of art or similar (as assets of historic houses) sold by private treaty to public collections

Antiques, works of art or similar (as assets of historic houses) used to settle a tax or estate duty debt with HMRC

Confusing.
Fortunately I don’t own any antiques.

So it doesn't matter to you the type of business? If it creates a net benefit for society? It doesn't matter to you that wealthy families take straight from the state pot to deliver the same benefits for their kids with the grammar system that creates sink schools in their areas? The fact one family pays to keep from taking from that pot while the other relishes in the fact they get it free?

Let's not pretend the parents want something different with grammar schools - it is adding more onto parents who don't want to take from the state while boosting the ego of those that do and encouraging increasing those numbers. When the grammar schools bulge with the rich, is that the society Labour are aiming for?

Education is a charitable purpose in itself. Society as a whole benefits from a well-educated population.

Since when was VAT a punishment? When I pay VAT on a bill I'm not worrying about why I'm being punished.

Starmer is saying that the VAT he proposes to add to private school fees will be channelled into the state education system. However we use the facilities of the local private school (swimming pool, sports fields) two days per week for no charge. If they lose their charitable status we lose access to that.

There actually isn't anything to stop the school continuing to let you use its facilities if it's so benevolent. But really, the fact that a few people in one area might have to pay about to enjoy otherwise exclusive facilities isn't really an argument against VAT on fees.

Also any money gained from VAT will potentially be outweighed by more pupils joining from the local private - or pupils who would have potentially gone but now won't. It costs the taxpayer roughly £8k per year to educate a child in the state system - we won't gain anything like that from VAT to cover the "new" pupils we acquire from the private system.

Element 1 funding for state schools is in the region of £4K per pupil per year. It certainly costs more than that for schools when they don't have full classes, because obviously they have to pay teachers etc the same regardless; and there is an increasing number of classes that are not full and indeed schools where numbers are falling dangerously low. Filling those places will be nothing but beneficial for state education.

Is this threshold the same for all small businesses or business? Or does a ballet school teacher for example pay less tax than a teacher who works in a school?

Aren’t ballet lessons a luxury?

So they are paying tax like everyone else. The horse riding school and ballet school aren’t charities.

You do realise education is charity? For example when somebody leaves part of their estate in trust to an educational institution, it's exempt for the purpose of inheritance tax. At what point do we stop? Private nurseries? Universities? Colleges?

@Scruffily Private school kids won't be taking up places at schools with loads of spare places. Most will wait until the next point of entry and move house to make sure they get their kids into their chosen school effectively pushing other parents with less resource out. Some will start tutoring for grammar school entrance. But I doubt one single private school child suddenly lands at a failing school.

2 girls at dd's private have left to join local grammars.
Dd herself got into our grammar but refused to go because she was so badly bullied in her state primary by the girls going for having dyslexia. They don't have a single dyslexic in their cohort at the grammar, so I couldn't do that to dd.
I agree grammar areas create the problem where privates have to be used to avoid the sink schools.

@ArseInTheCoOpWindow I don't think abolishing private schools would help in the long run. Those parents with money will buy their children advantages in other ways: they'll move to areas with the best state schools despite house prices being high, they'll pay for tutors, their children will have more experiences as they have more money to provide these.

If it is just private schools that is the issue then yes, it will solve this, but children being more privileged than others is much harder to address.

I don't think it's meant to be a punishment as such, but the fact that certain 'basic essentials' (often bizarrely and grossly unfairly allocated as to what is included and what isn't) are zero-rated does rather suggest that it's acknowledged people may struggle to afford them and/or go without them if VAT were added; so I suppose there is an element of VAT potentially being seen as the 'stick' - on goods attracting VAT - with the zero-rated options (if indeed they are optional) being the 'carrot'.

Just to take one commodity, I think the high taxation on petrol and diesel - where there is a 'punishment' tax on them, and then VAT is charged on the 'luxury' of paying that punishment tax (which I was always led to believe was technically illegal, but who knows?) - suggests an element of VAT being deliberately used as a disincentive to buy, if not strictly a punishment.

Leaving aside the hidden tax on the recent mandatory downgrading of the efficiency (but not the price or the tax) of standard petrol, of course!

I don’t believe there was no dyslexics.

I taught secondary for 25 years. There was always 2 or 3 in every class with dyslexia.

My own D’s had dyslexia. When he was diagnosed they tested his ability. He had an IQin the top 3%. He would easily have got into a grammar.

Fortunately where l live there are no grammar schools. So he went to a comp and then to university.

Not getting a tax break is not a punishment.

They're not punishing the parents, they are taxing the company that provides an optional service. The bigger question is why has the country previously been subsidising these companies by classing them as charities to begin with. The richest in society do not need charity to help them access a service that most other people don't have.

But @Begsthequestion no other education types are required to pay VAT. If my children remain in independent school we will save the state school system £200000 over the course of 14 years. We also already pay a lot of tax.

So agree. Let’s fund better education for all children.

Perhaps if op is overworked as a TA look to change careers. Agree that TAs are given too much work with little pay or recognition.

But private school parents are funding the state education, they pay for the private schools on top of what they already contribute in tax and NI.

Pricing them out of private schools will reduce their contribution by more than the revenue of the proposal.

A lot of people on this thread don't seem to understand our tax system or Labour's proposals. Charitable status is not being taken away from private schools. They will continue to pay no corporation tax. They will also continue to pay VAT on their expenses. At the moment they can't claim it back. Currently there's no VAT charged on education provided in a private school. Labour say they will change the law so there is. Parents will pay higher fees. The schools will then tot up the VAT they've collected and deduct the VAT they've paid. As pointed out above if they have a big building project on, they could end up being owed money by HMRC.

Em, if the person providing the lessons files as a small business and turns over more than £85k than yes they do pay VAT!!!

THIS.