Strange but true
We don’t have many biscuits in the house, but those that do make it over the threshold tend to be plain chocolate digestives.
My fault: I am not a fan of the milk chocolate used for biscuits, it’s a bit sickly. So plain chocolate digestives were the compromise because I really am not a fan of digestives either.
Once you’ve switched from milk chocolate diggies to plain ones, you never look back.
But weirdly, this few millimetres of plain chocolate make them a luxury item so liable to VAT or value added tax.
Where on earth are you going with this?
Chocolate, plain chocolate diggies and sweets are all liable to VAT, at 20%, that’s quite a mark up.
But cakes are not. They are deemed a staple food, seriously. A chocolate cake is deemed an essential: so a 400g chocolate cake is £2.75 and 400g of chocolate is also £4 but with 80p going to the exchequor.
So?
Well, what is more luxorious than a cake? What has more labour and effort put into it than a cake?
More importantly, our 400g of chocolate contains 266 Calories (kCal) in it, where-as the cake contains 424 Calories (kCal).
If you go to the nutrition, the cake is flagged as a “high fat” food and even the most basic cake is that, but it also flags highly on the sugar stakes
We don’t have many biscuits in the house, but those that do make it over the threshold tend to be plain chocolate digestives.
My fault: I am not a fan of the milk chocolate used for biscuits, it’s a bit sickly. So plain chocolate digestives were the compromise because I really am not a fan of digestives either.
Once you’ve switched from milk chocolate diggies to plain ones, you never look back.
But weirdly, this few millimetres of plain chocolate make them a luxury item so liable to VAT or value added tax.
Where on earth are you going with this?
Chocolate, plain chocolate diggies and sweets are all liable to VAT, at 20%, that’s quite a markup.
But cakes are not. They are deemed a staple food, seriously. A chocolate cake is deemed an essential: so a 400g chocolate cake is £2.75 and 400g of chocolate is also £4 but with 80p going to the exchequer.
So?
Well,
what is more luxurious than a cake? What has more labour and effort put into it
than a cake?
More importantly, our 400g of chocolate contains 266 Calories (kCal) in it,
where-as the cake contains 424 Calories (kCal).
If you go to the nutrition, the cake is flagged as a “high fat” food and even the most basic cake is that, but it also flags highly on the sugar stakes. A sponge cake in its most basic form is a third sugar, a third fat and a third flour – given that most flours are 50-75% sugar, that makes the humble cake a hugely luxurious food in terms of impact to health.
Which begs the question, why are we not charging VAT on cakes, please?
. A sponge cake in its most basic form is a third sugar, a third fat and a third flour – given that most flours are 50-75% sugar, that makes the humble cake a hugely luxorious food in terms of impact to health.
Which begs the question, why are we not charging VAT on cakes, please?
Posted: May 3rd, 2021 under 42.