UK "Pasty Tax" - WTF

shyguy01

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The whole idea is fucking ludi'crust'

What a hair brained tory twat, why doesn't he and his fellow tory scum find something better to do than taxing pastry??? Kill the NHS now this???

This country is fucking backwards, not 'great' no word or well crafted slogan is going to cover up what a disgrace the Tories are, 'foolishness' comes to mind, he has no plans to look after the real people who run this country.. 'us'. Rich or poor.
 

123scotty

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so if i go into a bakery early in the morning ask for a cold pie but they are just made out of the oven. do wait till it cools so i don't have to pay tax or can i get it tax free because heating the pie is part of making the pie. hmmm conundrum . this is just the small edge of getting vat put on food. next it will be fatty foods. then high sugar foods. followed by salty foods. where will it stop.
 

dandelion

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Someone suggested the problem here isnt really a bit of tax on pies but the symbolism. The same budget which cuts income tax for high earners puts tax on pies which most conservative politicians have great difficulty remembering when they last (if ever) ate one. If you believe the conservative claims about how little the extra income tax was raising, this tax on pies just about covers it. (though in reality the high earner income tax was abolished before anyone was forced to pay it so we shall never know how much it would have raised.)

Not forgetting the other glory of the budget. Increasing tax paid by pensioners to pay for cuts in tax paid by company shareholders.
 

mas2304

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I own and run a small company our turn over is roughly £200,000 a year, I worked out last year how much of this went to the government in tax, directly and indirectly - directly through the company and indirectly what staff paid out just for everyday living, we paid £40,000 in VAT on sales, £17,000 in PAYE and national insurance, our fuel bill - petrol - for the cars we run is a £1,000 a month, fuel duty and vat makes up 71p in every pound, so that's another £8,500 a year! When you take in the cost of living for employees, for every pound we make, 50p goes back to the government, and the government wonders why small business are struggling to keep going!
 

Jason

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Previously the UK has taxed food eaten in a restaurant but not take-away food. However the new system - which is an EU directive supported by a ruling in the ECJ - is that hot take-away food must be taxed. This includes things like takeaway fish and chips. The grey area is whether something like a pasty counts as hot. The decision is that it does.

With this and 101 other rules it would IMO be better if the UK made its own decisions. However this is not possible within the present framework. Cameron has NOT defended his decision on the basis that the EU has dictated it, as this would lead to protests where people set out that they want to leave the EU. IMO Cameron has a tightrope to tread. His coalition partners are fervently pro EU and I don't really see how at this time Cameron can lead an exit. So we get the absurdity of pasty-gate.
 

dandelion

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Previously the UK has taxed food eaten in a restaurant but not take-away food. However the new system - which is an EU directive supported by a ruling in the ECJ - is that hot take-away food must be taxed. This includes things like takeaway fish and chips. The grey area is whether something like a pasty counts as hot. The decision is that it does.

With this and 101 other rules it would IMO be better if the UK made its own decisions. However this is not possible within the present framework. Cameron has NOT defended his decision on the basis that the EU has dictated it, as this would lead to protests where people set out that they want to leave the EU. IMO Cameron has a tightrope to tread. His coalition partners are fervently pro EU and I don't really see how at this time Cameron can lead an exit. So we get the absurdity of pasty-gate.
You just said pasties is a grey area. So it is NOT a question of an Eu directive but a UK interpretation. As usual. Nothing to do with europe.
 

Jason

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You just said pasties is a grey area. So it is NOT a question of an Eu directive but a UK interpretation. As usual. Nothing to do with europe.

Yes I got it wrong. Actually it's not a grey area - the EU requires warm food to be taxed. The grey area is of course the content of pasties.