Parents Pay £500M To Beat Private School VAT Raid
5th August 2025
Parents at Britain’s top private schools have defied Labour’s VAT raid by paying fees in advance.
Telegraph analysis shows the most expensive private schools received hundreds of millions of pounds in fees upfront last year as parents scrambled to avoid the 20 per cent tax raid, which came into force on Jan 1 2025.
The scale of the advance payments has stunned tax experts, who warned it posed a challenge to Labour’s revenue-raising plans. Sources suggested that the Chancellor would consider ways to claw back the lost VAT.
This is how the Deep State operates: (1) Socialists in government come up with a scheme to ‘soak the rich’; (2) The prospective victims very rationally change their behavior to avoid getting ‘soaked’; (3) This behavioral change, which the simple-minded apparatchiks never seem able to anticipate, although any normal person could see it coming, throws their More Money to Spend plans into disarray; (4) government bureaucrats plot new ways to ‘claw back’ the money they would have gotten if only the sheep had stood by to be fleeced.
Rinse, repeat. (Thta screech you hear in the background is the voice of Professor Umbrage–Elizabeth Warren–whining about people who won’t stand still and allow themselves to be robbed. The swine!)