Private schools would start paying tax on fees and business rates under a Labour government, a leaked document suggests.
Fee-paying schools - like Eton College, where Boris Johnson and David Cameron went to school - have long benefited from cosy tax breaks because they are granted charitable status by the Government.
Jeremy Corbyn has long planned to use money raised from charging VAT on fees to pay for free school meals for all primary school children..
And a memo prepared by Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell reportedly suggests private schools would no longer get sweetheart reductions on business rates.
Some fee-paying schools, which charge parents an average of £15,000 a year, benefit from an 80% discount on business rates.
The memo suggests scrapping private schools’ charitable status could raise as much as £1.64 billion a year.
And posh schools like Eton - which rakes in £45 million a year in fees - could have to cough up around £4 million in business rates over five years, according to research carried out by business rates firm CVS in 2017.
The Labour Party declined to comment on leaked documents.
But a source said: “Private schools help hoard wealth, power and opportunity for the few. We’re proud that in the last election we said we’d tax private schools and pay for free school meals for all primary school kids.”
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