Becoming more and more irritable about the private school VAT thing. I pay VAT on my glasses, which I literally need to see (but equally, I concede, I did not need to spend a three figure sum on some Oliver Peoples' frames). Is that class war?
Just musing to myself how absolutely insane the Telegraph articles on this will be after another five weeks of campaigning if this is where they are at already
'Just like the Khymer Rouge, Rishi Sunak insists on making me pay VAT just because I decided I wanted a third pair of frames for special occasions' - I don't write this because people would rightly think I had gone completely insane.
Me, thinking about this policy normally: 'It raises a negligible amount, and I think the rabbit hole of whether after-school violin lessons will remain exempt etc. is not worth the effort'
Me, whenever I hear someone bleat about it: 'You should have to pay a windfall tax for the YEARS of non-VAT'.
It's a loophole that private schools benefit from because (IMO rightly) it was judged an easier way of exempting universities, which there are good, UK economy reasons for exempting from VAT. But please, stop acting like it's unreasonable that you be taxed on the same rate as I am on my insurance!
I do think part of the problem here is that, like Fox, the Telegraph writes this horseshit and yet still gets treated like a legitimate media outlet. Like, if you want to be Infowars fill your boots, but that means no more interviews with serious humans.
Yeah, don't entirely understand the pushback (and, full disc., it will directly affect me, as that was the choice we made for Small Human); I guess my only asterisk here is that I'd like/hope that the money raised goes to 'the right places' - which I accept is an entirely subjective thing, but still
hypothecated tax is always one of those things that is easy and popular to propose and incredibly hard to successfully deliver. Super popular to say "Charge VAT on private schools and use the money to fund SureStart" or whatever. Not easy to do so without that funding being inherently variable
Yeh, that's entirely fair; and it's not lost on me that the circa. £4k they'll get out of 'me' will be spread across whatever they want to spend on (so a bit on Education, bit on Health, bit on Military, etc.); ultimately it comes back to a desire just to see, or feel like, things are getting better
I'm enraged by VAT on clothes for children over 14. Basically our society says: fine, have children if you want, it will be very expensive until they reach school age and then we'll smash you in the face again ten years later. This is what brought Hitler to power.
Who is this Telegraph drivel *for* actually, anyway? Is it meant to convert DKs? Bring out those Tory voters who might stay home? With the readership as it is, is this gonna move the needle in any way? Does anybody else see this other than us laugh/crying over screenshots of this nonsense?
Sure, but even those of us with the worst new glasses habits spend less than that writer’s boss on private school fees, and that matters far more than the country as a whole.
They give themselves up so cheap don’t they, these columnists. Like, I’m sure they lay on the ‘of course, it’s just a game we play’ shit pretty thickly when they’re propping up the bar in the evenings, but they’re still writing this insane shit for a living.
Years ago I ended up on a stag do with a bloke who worked for The Sun and he was so apologetic about it you thought mate you should just get another job
I've got a friend who's in a non-political part of the Times and imagine he feels extremely let down by the political bits, but steady journalism jobs aren't exactly easy to come by these days.
I guess nowhere’s perfect, but yeah, I notice articles in the times with a rising sense of disdain.
Sun, Mail, Telegraph and Express have never been less that absolute toilets in my lifetime though. At any point.
It’s weird tho. It’s been pointed out plenty that The Times readership sits well to the left of the current editorial line under Tony Gallagher. Hard to see that surviving an election in which the Tories get half dismantled by the electorate.
I’ve seen both sides of that one - people who protest that they hate doing it, and people who try and double down and rationalise the job in the face of embarrassed silence.
OTOH I do the Labour policy think it *is* a bit class warry but - crucially, and something that is a major part of driving the telegraph insane - class war that most of the public agree with quite heartily
Yeah, the rationale from a lot of Labour people is pure class war, but as you say, it is popular among most people, and even among those who it isn't, particularly, well...as I say, I pay VAT on my posh spectacles!
Just remembering the last “not quite class war but definitely coloured by class war” policy that they were on the wrong side of and coloured perceptions of them for ages and it’s…fox hunting isn’t it?
Absolutely yes. This is my point. They are exposing their soft underbelly, that they are a special interest group for a small privileged portion of the populace. And if they make enough noise they could convince the wider Tory party to do exactly the same thing. Which I’m sure Labour will love.
I broadly think that stopping unpopular things that only weirdo freaks do is probably bad unless they involve animal cruelty and/or entitled stampeding over other people's land.
Right: if I actually cared about it, I would have some quite complicated and conflicted views about it partially because of getting flinchy about class war sabre rattling from people who went to comps but also ski and have a "piano room".
However, I really, really don't actually care.
(Like it's about the 300th issue about which I might actually care, as someone in the fairly rare position that my 7 years of Latin and 4 years of Greek were of genuine professional benefit to me. But as you say, it's popular, the impact is minimal, and it's kind of niche)
Not arguing the point, but I suppose the difference is that private school users are declining a benefit which costs the state £100k or so per child. The parallel might be private medical treatment, which is largely exempt from VAT. You're saving the NHS money, so a quid pro quo is 0% VAT.
I take that point, but the example of my posh glasses shows that people are in fact not that price sensitive. (It's also quite a bit less than £100k per child, but that's by the by: I am open to 'the juice is not worth the squeeze' arguments. I am not open to special pleading about VAT exemptions)
One could argue, given how Boris turned out, that “VALUE ADDED TAX” should be levied on Eton school fees only on the “VALUE ADDED” which in Boris’s case has proven to be zero or negative.
I'm not wholly convinced on the medical treatment one, since it depends heavily on the treatment and quite often you'll be using otherwise-NHS doctors and facilities just with privileged access.
Right, the NHS treatment is actually quite a lot more complex than schooling. Private schools do actually create additional capacity, it is far from clear that most UK private healthcare does that.
Sure - these are political judgments, and I wouldn't necessarily disagree with the impetus behind the proposals. Just that there's an additional layer to the argument beyond the line that says "there's VAT on sofas, why not school fees"
Sure - equally I very consciously did not use sofas as an example as I think there is a very clear difference between a sofa and a school. But the wide range of public health products that are basically 'you can get it free or zero VAT but ugly OR you can pay a lot of VAT on it' is similar.
I would love to see proper data on what gets treated privately - I vaguely assume it's a lot of long-waitlist but relatively inexpensive routine stuff (eg. hip replacements) and not acute emergency (minimal waits), or very long-term, extremely expensive stuff (cancer care).
Sounds about right. I think over half is paid by company-related insurance plans (BUPA etc), and those policies are all about "get my employee back to work ASAP", rather than end of life care and the like.
I got a private GP appointment on a Sunday afternoon recently because after 2 days of phoning 111 to no avail I was desperate - and yes, I am completely certain I got an NHS GP picking up extra cash on private calls - so I expect it's a wide spectrum. include trans healthcare too.
In the UK in my experience the private companies do not touch acute emergency stuff: when my wife required that kind of thing after a climbing accident it was the NHS that picked up all the bits and BUPA paid out a nice compensatory "Sorry we couldn't help this time" payment for each day in hospital
