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Comment by ZeroGravitas | Hacker News Reader

> VAT cannot be levied on private school fees under EU law.

Given the long history of people the in the UK spouting absolute nonsense about what is or is not possible under EU law, do you have a reliable source for that claim?

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The EU VAT directive is long misunderstood. Countries have extreme room for interpretation of the VAT rules. For example, Ireland beat the UK on making period products tax exempt by about 20 years, something supposedly disallowed by EU directives. I know Greece charges VAT on fee-paying schools, and the EU doesn't do anything about it.

Ireland, in fairness, has a history of doing tax things just this side of the law, occasionally straying into the wrong side. Notable examples would be corporation tax prior to 2013 (see the Apple thing) and VRT (the EC has actually commented on this, essentially saying that it's legal but against the spirit of the law).

But yeah, very little stopping the UK following Ireland's lead, particularly on relatively trivial matters like the private school fees thing.

Quick search leads to the EU council directive on VAT Article 132[0], section I and J which says:

    Member States shall exempt the following transactions:

    [...]

    (i) the provision of children's or young people's education, school or university education, vocational training or retraining, including the supply of services and of goods closely related thereto, by bodies governed by public law having such as their aim or by other organisations recognised by the Member State concerned as having similar objects;

    (j) tuition given privately by teachers and covering school or university education;

That wording seems quite clearcut, but then there's a reason I'm not a lawyer.

[0] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELE...

Please see the guidelines[0] on how to treat people.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Seems a reasonable question to me, not cross-examining.

I don't think there are any examples of people spouting nonsense over what was allowed? What are you thinking of exactly? What you did sometimes see is that the UK actually followed EU law pretty closely, whereas other countries would flout it to a greater or lesser extent, and then the EU's supporters would say "look see, you can do X Y or Z whilst being in the EU". Which wasn't correct. Unfortunately it was a case of, for the EU's friends ... anything. For the UK, the law.

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