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Kurt Sansone
Parents pondering whether to send their kids to summer school have to contend with an added burden as from this year schools are obliged to charge 18 per cent VAT on services offered as these are not deemed to be educational.
The decision to charge VAT on summer schools fees seems to have taken many parents and school administrators by surprise. Until last year, services offered by summer schools were exempt from VAT and the new measure is expected to send prices soaring.
Education Minister Louis Galea confirmed that summer schools will have to charge VAT at 18 per cent. “The service provided by summer schools is not deemed to fall under the definition of Education as listed under item 12 Part Two of the Fifth Schedule of the VAT Act and is therefore taxable at the standard rate,” the Minister told MaltaToday.
Education Minister Louis Galea said: “Existing VAT legislation does not consider summer schools to be part of the National Curriculum and their services are therefore vatable.”
This conflicts with comments made by the Education Minister this week when launching government’s summer school initiative Skolasajf, which he described as “an educational and recreational programme.”
When asked by MaltaToday, Galea would not comment on the apparent conflict between government’s stated policy to encourage more women join the labour force and the introduction of VAT on summer schools. What Galea said during the launch of Skolasajf that it was an “opportunity for working parents to put their minds at rest on the whereabouts of their children during working hours”, does not seem to apply to parents who choose private summer schools, it seems.
kurt@newsworksltd.com
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