Do you think the government should tax private school fees?

  • zante@slrpnk.net
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    6 days ago

    I never really like it when people decide what others can and can’t afford.

    • GreyEyedGhost@lemmy.ca
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      6 days ago

      It is still up to them to decide if they want to send their kids to private school, it is just no longer ger subsidized by the public.

      • zante@slrpnk.net
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        6 days ago

        Indeed. One can only hope they will stopped subsidising children’s clothes, childcare, baby formula etc as soon as possible, before the mob catch on .

        • GreyEyedGhost@lemmy.ca
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          6 days ago

          No children are being deprived of an education, and no one is having choice removed. Public schools are still being funded, and these children can go to them. If their parents aren’t satisfied with that, they can still send them to private schools. If you have concerns about the quality of education from public schools, feel free to explain to me how subsidizing private schools is helping that. And comparing subsidizing private schools when public schools are available to subsidizing children’s necessities is disingenuous at best.

          • zante@slrpnk.net
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            5 days ago

            If you continue to view VAT exemption as a subsidy, but won’t apply the same logic to parents who are not using state education but still pay for it, were never going to agree

            • Log in | Sign up@lemmy.world
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              5 days ago

              You seem to think that rich parents paying their taxes whilst not sending children to state schools is a benevolent act. It’s no more benevolent than rich people paying their taxes who don’t have children.

              Paying your taxes without being the sole beneficiary isn’t a benevolent act, it’s a moral and legal obligation, and we don’t take from people just according to what we spend on them, that would be the abolition of taxation, but we instead take from them according to how much income they have.

              Honestly, the whole argument from “by rights the state owes me because they didn’t spend some of my taxes on me” it’s really entitled.

              So yeah, children’s clothes etc are discounted for vat because having kids is expensive for everyone, and some people can’t afford it. But private education isn’t benefiting anyone except rich people and it’s legitimate to decide we can’t afford it after years and years of austerity where somehow this escaped the knife because it would have affected actual Conservative MPs, so obviously we can’t have that.

              • zante@slrpnk.net
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                5 days ago

                If you keep telling me what I think, you’ll easily win this argument .

                • Log in | Sign up@lemmy.world
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                  5 days ago

                  That’s not a substantive point and sidesteps every single point I made with a simple and decidedly vague “that’s not exactly the words I said”.

                  So attribution aside, is there anything I said that you agree or disagree with? Any actual points to make?

      • zante@slrpnk.net
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        5 days ago

        I would hope those formulating tax policy have access to a bit more data than jonnyonline.

        • Log in | Sign up@lemmy.world
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          5 days ago

          Or just access to some good old common sense like “let’s abolish a tax break that only well off people can access, and which they use to segregate education into rich and poor silos”.

    • Echo Dot
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      4 days ago

      I mean that’s literally the governments job. Without taxes we wouldn’t have a government so that sentence makes literally no sense

      • zante@slrpnk.net
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        4 days ago

        My dear old thing, as we have established to everyone’s satisfaction but yours, there is a large and obvious difference between the Government doing it - with His Majesty’s Revenue & Customs at their right hand - indeed the entirety of the Civil Service - and JonnyOnTheInternet doing it.

        Do you understand?

        If you do, we can move on to discuss how Tax Policy is not based solely what people can afford to pay, but a multitude of other issues, such has lobbying, international competition and even nudge theory - but it’s a dry topic and unfortunately one of us could come out of it looking a bit stupid.

        All told it’s probably best if you smash that down arrow, and move on. But it’s up to you.

        • Echo Dot
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          4 days ago

          there is a large and obvious difference between the Government doing it - with His Majesty’s Revenue & Customs at their right hand - indeed the entirety of the Civil Service - and JonnyOnTheInternet doing it.

          Right but it is them doing it so it’s okay then