I am not Mark Wadsworth
If Wince wants a tax on the incomes of graduates in perpetuity to 'pay for their ed-yew-kay-shun' a few choices will present themselves (as eny fule no):
1. Will any of my children who don't have a degree get a tax cut in perpetuity?
2. If they take and pass a degree I will recommend that they emigrate
3. I might decided to take them out of the state funded sector after 'A' Levels and do my own finance package to pay for a degree at a competing university elsewhere in the World.
4. ...and since I have a business I might be able to claim that as a business expense as I think you can for 'staff training'. Anyway I'd hide it somehow.
5. I might think that as it's now taxed, education is clearly a Bad Thing and get them to work (cleaning chimneys?) from age 16.
6. ...any more ideas?
(Personally I think all this is Just Wince politicking, the silly old fool. Move along. Nothing to see here)
Lola
Put On Your Big Boy Pants, Maybe?
4 minutes ago
11 comments:
1. I doubt it.
2. That's what I was thinking. Or do a degree in Scotland?
3. Ditto.
4. You'll be lucky to get away with that, but the trick would be to pay their fees as a benefit in kind, which would mainly be tax-free on the recipient and allowable on the employer as salary (but not as staff training)..
5. It's A Good Thing. That's why they're encouraging it by, er, taxing it?
6. Don't vote Lib Dem next time?
If it is a "graduate" tax, could one go through a University course, but simply not turn up to the final exam, or better, do the exams, get the marks, but don't return a library book, since many institutions "won't permit you to graduate if there are outstanding payments due to the University"? You'd then not technically be a graduate, so exempt from a graduate tax, and any sensible employer would hopefully recognise that you had the same skills as someone on the same course but with a magic piece of paper.
AVI
Nice try, AVI, but I expect the rule would be: attend university, pay the tax, whether you got a degree or not. Otherwise it's a dosser's charter.
wv: ingener, as in "Last week I cudn't spel ingener, now I are won"
AVI, I don't think it would work, see what B says.
For the monoglot, the question arises of where they can do a good degree, in English, on cheap and cosy EU terms. I understand that there are good engineering degrees taught in English in the Netherlands and in Denmark. There's Switzerland too, but the terms may be a bit pricey, being nonEU. Someone ought to write a blog abaht it, innit?
'ang on a mo, guv. Wot abaht Trinity Dublin? Or UCD?
D, I think that was Lola's point 3.
Yeah, but I'm trying to identify where. The days when you could assume that our engineering students could speak French and read German and Latin are long gone.
Why go abroad, why not go to the University of Buckingham?
I suppose the socialists would cry foul if we volunteered to pay the full cost of tuition fees rather than have our children subject to the motivation and intelligence tax.
S, I'm assuming that the UoB is fully private and not subsidised (apart from the VAT exemption), in which case those fees look very good value. Other private providers seem to offer similarly good value.
Further I'm, assuming that the govt. won't apply the graduate tax to all graduates, regardless where they studied.
In which case, there's the answer Dearieme was looking for - the better state-sector universities will just privatise themselves somehow and plough on regardless.
...and finally, of course, it isn't a graduate tax at all. As, since it is levied as income tax, it will be a tax on the employers of graduates In other words it is just more payroll tax.
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