VAT on some foods?

In message , Derek F writes

Thats the idea.

Its probably a mistake either by you in interpreting the receipt, or by the vendor. Please tell us what the receipt ACTUALLY says.

Non-essential or luxury foods are vatable, mince pies being hardly essential since we can do without them 51 weeks per year.

BTW surprising how many hits you get for 'mice pies' when you mistakenly type this in instead of 'mince'!

Food is normally zero rated.

The 2 main exceptions are food for consumption on the premises, and *hot* food for consumption off the premises.

There are other excepted items like ice cream, confectionery, crisps etc which are standard rated.

Even if you put it in inverted commas?

Oh, I just did it and got 81!

Wasn't there a case a while back which centred on whether "Jaffa Cakes" were indeed cakes, or actually biscuits - possibly due to the VAT treatment?

Indeed - the United Biscuits (UK) Ltd case.

C&E lost - they were ruled to be "cakes", and thus zero rated. :)

It seems contrary to common sense that biscuits would be taxed and cakes not. Why would biscuits be deemed more luxurious than cakes?

It's nothing to do with Marie Antoinette having declared cakes to be staple food, has it?

She didn't, the poor darling's been blighted by history:

In short the idea "was that the bread shortage could be alleviated if the law was enforced against profiteering bakers".

Profiteering tax organisations with inconsistent and odd views on luxury items came much later.

Headers spam-proofed. Use cmylod at bigfoot . com

I noticed it as we had only bought that item. The bill said mince pies 84p. Vat @ 17.5% = 15p. Total 99p. This was in the Food Hall of Jenners in Edinburgh. Derek.

Even if you put it in inverted commas?

Oh, I just did it and got 81!

That's terrible!

Can we put her head back on?

[Interleaved quotes: read to end for all comments] begin quote from Derek F in uk.finance about: Re: VAT on some foods?

It might just be a built-in 'feature' of the cash register.

There are probably some countries where it is a requirement or custom to explicitly specify the proportion of the price paid in tax (possibly related to the way that in the USA prices are shown less tax on the shelves and local sales tax is only added at the till, and a probable US-centric dominance in cash register design), and to make things easy for themselves, the shopkeepers have just keyed in 17.5% for the default value and left it at that.

It might make for an interesting legal argument were a business to attempt to reclaim the indicated amount of VAT supposedly paid, though: are mince pies cakes (VAT-free) or luxury foodstuffs (VAT-rated)?

If the phone number on the till receipt appears as 131-xxx-yyyy that might be another clue to a US-designed cash register (after all, _everybody_ uses NANP numbers, don't they, why make it a freeform field..?)

If it is, they'd better sort it out quickly. What they are doing is illegal if no VAT is payable on the item.

I can see your point but I'm sure they set a price and just choose to pay some of it over to HMC&E! It's not like they're charging a service and adding VAT and then keeping it.

I was thinking more of the them issuing a VAT receipt for goods that were not vatable. I don't think HMCE would be very happy about that.

Then it's a pretty crappy register.

The bill that I've just got from my local German supermarket shows me the total of the VAT of the items at the lower (food) rate and the total of the items at the standard (everything else) rate. This is a standard feature of the register.

When I go shopping in Sainsbury the receipts are also capable of showing the same information, it's just that one of the rates is zero, so that total is left blank.

tim

If they paid the VAT over to the HMC&E I wouldn't have thought HMC&E would be too upset.

I bought three items in the Foodhall yesterday, kilo sausages and two tins of soup, this time there was no mention of VAT on the bill. The bill just gave the total, the amount tendered and the change. Next time I will have to try and buy a luxury item and a basic food item and see how they cope with that. Derek.

They would be. HMCE require the company to comply with the VAT rules. They can't just pick and choose what items they charge VAT on and what they don't. Charging VAT and issuing a VAT invoice on an item on which VAT is not chargeable is clearly against the rules.