Labour’s Private School VAT Raid Falls Apart As Parents Simply Pay Early – Guido Fawkes

Labour’s Private School VAT Raid Falls Apart As Parents Simply Pay Early

mdi-fullscreen

The UK’s top 50 private schools took in a whopping £515 million in fees upfront last year to beat Rachel Reeves’ VAT raid. That’s up from £121 million in 2023. Combined with the closure of 54 independent schools and the 11,000 or so fall in pupil numbers, the Treasury’s hope of using the 20% VAT hike on fees to pay for just about everything is quickly diminishing. There are currently more than 2,600 private schools in Britain, so the total figure will be even higher…

According to the Telegraph, the richest parents will have saved £103 million by handing over the cash in advance. At Eton College alone, the total sum pumped into its prepayment scheme soared from £16.6 million in 2023 to £52.7 million last year. A 217.5% increase…

Some parents may even have prepaid five years’ worth of fees – so if the scheme is reversed by, say, a change in government, they will have avoided the raid entirely. It’s the smallest private schools, where parents can’t afford to hand over hundreds of thousands at once, that lose out the most here…