Rishi Sunak has handed himself a £12,700 tax break by refusing to scrap perks for private schools, it can be revealed.
The PM, who sends both his daughters to be privately educated, personally benefits from his bumper giveaway for privileged parents.
Keir Starmer wants to remove the charitable status of private schools, which means parents don’t pay VAT on fees. But the PM has rejected the plan.
Mr Sunak’s eldest daughter attends an exclusive boarding school that charges an eye-watering £41,250 a year.
His youngest child goes to the same prep school as David and Victoria Beckham ’s daughter Harper. It charges £22,350 a year - taking their total education bill to £63,600.
By not charging VAT on private school fees, Mr Sunak will save himself £12,720 this year - which is more than the total household income of five million people.
Over the rest of their education, the PM is expected to fork out around £622,000 in fees. He will get a tax break of around £124,000 over the next decade saving thanks to the VAT exemption.
Mr Sunak is the wealthiest leader the country has ever had. He and his wife Akshata Murty have a £730million fortune, more than twice that of the King.
The Mirror revealed yesterday that voters back Labour ’s plan to scrap tax breaks for private schools.
Almost two thirds - 62% - believe that private schools should be stripped of their charitable status, according to polling.
The perk means they are exempt from charging VAT. In England and Wales, they also get at least 80% relief on business rates.
Labour has said it would use the £1.7billion that would be raised from scrapping the tax perks to improve the state education system.
At Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday, Mr Starmer called for an “end to the Tory scandal" of the exemptions.
The Tories claim that scrapping tax breaks for private schools would lead to an exodus of pupils into the state system, but this has been debunked.
Government minister Paul Scully said "a load of schools" will be forced to close if they are stripped of their charitable status.
However, figures show that despite a massive increase in the cost of private education in the past decade, the number of pupils paying for tuition has not fallen.
Net private school fees rose from £11,000 in 2009/10 to £13,700 in 2019/20, a real terms increase of 23%, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies.
At the same time, the number of private pupils remained around 560,000 to 570,000.
