VAT on tuition fees stays

The Supreme Court yesterday stayed for eight weeks a High Court order that had halted VAT collection on tuition fees paid to English medium schools.

The order came after the National Board of Revenue filed a petition challenging the HC order.

English medium school students had paid VAT on tuition fees since 2007 but the HC responding to a petition last month stayed the VAT collection.

Following the SC order, students are obliged to pay the VAT, said Attorney General Mahbubey Alam.

The government in this year's budget imposed 7.5 percent VAT on tuition fees of private university students, triggering a widespread protest in the capital and elsewhere in the first week of September.

Students took to the streets, virtually paralysing the capital for three days. The government then came up with a "clarification" that VAT would be collected from the universities, not from the students, but the protest did not let up.

Amid such a situation, the government exempted private university students from VAT on September 14.

Three days later, around 300 parents, students and teachers of English medium schools formed a human chain on footpaths of Sat Masjid Road in Dhanmondi to press home their demand that VAT on English medium school fees be withdrawn too.

They termed it "dual policy" that the government lifted only the VAT on private universities.

The same day, guardians of two English medium students filed a writ petition challenging VAT on school fees, in response to which the HC stayed the VAT collection for six months. The court also issued a rule asking the government to explain why the imposition of VAT should not be declared illegal.

Petitioners' lawyer Shahdeen Malik yesterday told The Daily Star he had expected that the government would not appeal to the SC against the HC order and would not victimise schoolchildren.

"If the government feels that VAT from school students would be its source of income then be it. Let the government reap money from the students."

He would take steps after consulting his clients about the hearing on the rule issued by the HC, Shahdeen Malik added.