Partner Article

I’m not wearing VAT! School uniforms – a reason to thank the taxman

For most parents, the end of the school holidays can be a costly affair. Before kids head back to school, most mums and dads will find themselves forking out for new uniforms – and that’s before they’ve even started thinking of shelling out for sports equipment and stationery.

But parents should be grateful to the taxman that the hit on their wallets isn’t as bad as it could be.

Since the 1940 Finance Act, all clothing and footwear designed for young children have been free from sales tax and VAT, as it has been the intention of successive Chancellors to provide relief on clothing for children up to the 12 to 14 age group.

The current VAT relief for young people’s clothing is therefore based upon children of an average size at their fourteenth birthday, as it is accepted that it is at this point that children’s body measurements become indistinguishable from those of a considerable number of adults.

While it would undoubtedly be beneficial to hard pressed parents if all children’s clothing, or even all school uniforms were VAT free, unfortunately due to EU rules the Government’s hands are tied when it comes to extending VAT relief to clothing for older pupils, even if it wanted to.

So how do you prove that your child is ‘of the right size’ when buying kids clothes? Well, you don’t have to as HMRC has a useful table of maximum measurements, based on the relevant British Standard of the ‘average 14 year old’.

But what about larger children? Well, they don’t necessarily have to pay VAT either as there are exemptions in place to address this. HMRC will still accept that garments are designed for children if (amongst other specified criteria):

• The item of clothing has been designed for a person under 14 and is only suitable for young children, and
• The measurements used are at or below those specified by HMRC in a supplementary table for larger children.
• Or alternatively, the clothing is restricted by some other design feature to those under 14.

As parents, we can expect our teenage sons and daughters to be wearing the same fashionable clothes as their friends, but we probably didn’t expect the cost of buying these clothes to have a 20% impact on our budget.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Baker Tilly .