We should use our new Brexit freedoms to abolish VAT on school uniforms to help families with the cost of living: Andrew Lewer MP

17 comments

  1. > The reason for this levy is a historic EU rule that determined member states had to coordinate on VAT rates to ensure no “unfair competition” across borders.

    Unsurprisingly it isn’t.

    When the UK implemented VAT in 1973 it was agreed that some items not subject to the UK’s Purchase Tax – a sales tax that existed in the UK before VAT was introduced on the UK becoming a member of the EEC and was discontinued when VAT was introduced.

    One of those items was ‘young children’s clothing’.

    Purchase Tax did not apply to ‘young children’s clothing’, with ‘young’ being defined as under 14.

    Why under 14 – there are two reasons.

    When Purchase Tax was introduced the school leaving age was 14, and despite the leaving age having risen to 16 by 1973 the UK government had never increased the age for the exclusion from the UK’s Purchase Tax.

    The reason why the UK had not increased the age for Purchase Tax is the same issue for VAT; many school uniforms are simply shirts, jumpers, trousers and skirts. How do you determine that a white shirt sold by a supermarket is ‘uniform’ and not just a white shirt that could be worn by any adult.

    Fair enough remove VAT from all clothing to support struggling families, but to suggest that the UK imposing VAT on school uniforms for over 14s was down to the EU and removing it for school uniforms would be easy – that is just political sound bites thrown to the baying crowd.

  2. I’d rather see us using that 350m quid a week we’re going to get back being used for the NHS as promised instead of seeing NI go up.

    Has anyone actually asked them where all that money went now that we’ve left? Because they were pretty keen to let us know how much better off we’ll be at the time…

    /s

  7. Isn’t the main problem with school uniforms that some schools demand specific items that cost far more than the basic items available from supermarkets?

    Kids have to wear something, and school uniforms from Asda, Tesco etc are about as cheap as clothes get. If all schools allowed kids to wear those items, the problem would be reduced considerably.

    But if a school demands £30 trousers rather than the £5 George equivalent, getting rid of the VAT is just pissing in the ocean.

  8. Or, hear me out, abolish school uniforms entirely.

    Smaller kids clothes are already zero VAT rated and allow people in receipt of child benefit a certain amount to claim back for the bigger ones.

  11. Or perhaps we should ban schools from telling parents that they can only buy school uniforms from a specific (very expensive) supplier.

    My kids school done this a few years ago, white polo shirt with the school badge on £20 each…

  12. If I were leading the country, I’d be pushing through a mandate to abolish school uniforms outright and just allow children to wear what they want, so long as it isn’t inappropriate. If a workplace with a casual dress code would allow it, it should be allowed in school.

    This would do a lot more to lift families out of poverty than Rishi Sunak’s paltry tax cuts and rebates.

    You can argue that this puts children at risk of being bullied as much as you like, the whole industry and monopolies surrounding school uniform suppliers is crooked and is putting more families into poverty. Kids are still going to be bullied for other things anyway, and I’m pretty sure an old & tattered uniform is going to be far more of a red flag for kids to rip on each other than a cheap no-label shirt from TK Maxx.

    It’s 2022, we need to get with the fucking times.

  13. You can cut the VAT off anything you sell whilst in the EU, you just can’t go below a certain number (10 or 15%)

    So like the old Tampon Tax bugbear:

    0% VAT = A okay
    10 % VAT = Again okay
    8% VAT = Not allowed

    We could do it, we always could’ve done it… we just won’t do it… suffer plebs

  14. Claiming something as a Brexit freedom does not make it so. I doubt the EU was desperate to make it so that kids in the UK had to wear overpriced uniforms from specific outlets chosen by schools looking for a kickback.

  16. The opposition really needs to weaponise Brexit more like this. Why aren’t we using the Brexit freedoms promised…? Almost as if it was all bullshit and we had those freedoms already

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