So there have been a lot of people running their mouth about student protests, all over newspaper comment sections, personal blogs, Facebook, and indeed.. Sick Chirpse. Which, might I add, is totally cool; everyone is entitled to his or her opinion on whether shit needs to be smashed up, but I won’t be going into mine right now. Although I am kinda finding a lot of these opinions just feel to me to be wildly under-informed.

What I want to clarify, in brief, is this:

Any UK employee has to pay tax. This, for the love of God, includes students. I am getting so bored of this ai???students are tax dodgers mentality, so here is a real quick tax lesson, it isn’t boring, I promise.

Simply put: If a person earns under A?6475 across the whole tax year, then they will not be taxed at all. This applies to anyone in the UK (includingAi??students, would you believe?!). So, if a student earns less than that amount then no, they won’t pay tax, theAi??same as if anyone else earns less. Above this amount and up to is 10% tax, and so on through the tax bands.

Now, before anyone says that they still ai???earnai??i?? or have that ai???incomeai??i?? through loans etc. then hush a second.Ai??You won’t beAi??taxed on a loan ai??i?? it isnai??i??t classed as income. This applies to mortgages, loans, student loans, credits cards and whateverAi??other credit you might haveai??i?? overdrafts. A student loan isnai??i??t an income, the clue is in the name -Ai??Student Loan.

Students, in general, donai??i??t earn enough in a year, primarily because they donai??i??t have jobs, or donai??i??t work enough hours to reach that threshold. They are too busy doing sit-ins, trashing London, hijacking Conservative HQ, getting STDs andai??i?? ermai??i?? apparently squeezing in time to do coursework.

There it is, the studentai??i??s tax dodging debunked. Consider that myth busted.

Second. According to https://essaybasics.com the whole point of the protests is that the future of any country lies in education – if people don’t know anything, then we’re pretty much boned. We can’t just assume that a family on the breadline can afford to raise A?27000 for fees alone in 18 years (assuming that’s how old the kid is) plus the maintenance money needed to eat and, I dunno, wear shoes? Essentially the point being that university is not just for the rich, because that means the rich would get nearly all the specialist jobs. Given, there are apprenticeships and what not for extremely specialist jobs, but seriously, can you imagine David Cameron messing his manicure up working steel or a lathe?

Like I say, the actual act of rioting aside, I think there are people who think that it is a simple as saving money or not going to university, when it actually goes way, way deeper. I gotta say though, I definitely agree about the Swedish hones.