Osborne relents over pasty tax
Following weeks of protests the coalition government has climbed down on two VAT measures announced in the Budget, including the ‘pasty tax’ and a new charge on static caravans.
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In my early days
a boss told me about the 7P's....Proper Planning and Preparation Prevents Pi$$ Poor Performance.
Clearly something they don't teach at Eaton (and indeed it seems not something he has picked up in his various 'second' jobs, apparently to help him understand what 'normal' people/businesses have to contend with).
(Of course the above could probably apply to the vast majoirty of the joke acts we call MPs....perhaps ITV should commission an X factor style audition system for Mps...and we get to vote by phone.....can't do any worse surely!?)
I'm pleased to see this decision reversed. This was going to be an extremely awkward tax to administer and didn't make a lot of sense from the start. To me it is the Government trying to raise additional taxes from what many people see as a staple food produce.
Emma // cheap accountant
Pastry tax
OK the U-turn is great news and I am pleased for the people concerned but in my view the impact this would have had on the general public will have been far less than the attack and claw back of child benefit ...
Who is complaining about this? I saw in the news earlier that it had gone through the select committed without a hitch..
Actual statement
Where would one go to see the actual official announcement? Have they just dropped it all together (so the current rules will apply for the moment) or have they just replaced the changes with less contencious ones?
Nowhere...
We spent yesterday trying to get something more concrete out of the government for Taxation. HMRC sent us to the Treasury, the Treasury didn't come back to us until the afternoon, and eventually sent a copy of the letter to Andrew Tyrie referred to by Robert above and an anodyne comment. They have decided that VAT will not be charged if food is left to cool down naturally, not kept hot, but they don't seem to have decided any more than that in a form which is fit for public consumption (either hot or cold...).
the change
The change reported in the Times this morning is that now that pasties will be classed as "hot takeaway food" if they are sold from a heated cabinet rather than being based on their actual temperature.
The whole thing was about making things consistent so hot pasties would be subject to the same VAT rules as say hot takeaway baked potatoes (or any other hot takeaway food).
There has been less coverage on the reversal of the change in VAT on touring caravans. Normal touring caravans are subject to VAT but touring caravans over 7.5 metres long were taxed like static caravans (i.e. exempt). This loophole had to be closed. Who on earth has a touring caravan over 7.5 metres long ? Ah. Retaliation for Dale Farm perhaps ?
Roll on a volte face
on the unworkable High Income Child Benefit charge!!
Time for an e-petition?
More advice I cannot charge for
I was going to write to clients and advise them to buy their hot pasties before this measure came in. There goes another earner.
I suppose we should be saying, "that takes the biscuit" but as there will now be no VAT, should it not be, "that takes the cake"?
.
I was going to write to clients and advise them to buy their hot pasties before this measure came in. There goes another earner.
I suppose we should be saying, "that takes the biscuit" but as there will now be no VAT, should it not be, "that takes the cake"?
Depends if it's chocolate covered ;)
Have you noticed on the tax comments...........
........... there are a large number of posts and by a relatively small group of individuals? So here's a tribute to you all; you know who you are -
From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remember'd;
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers (and sisters);
For (s)he to-day that sheds her/his bile with me
Shall be my sibling; be (s)he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle her/his condition:
And gentlemen in England now a-bed
Shall think themselves accursed they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day*.
* OK I know it's not until 25th October but these days, I feel grateful if I can hold a thought at all let alone 5 months.
New tax regime
I have thought up a new tax regime that allows all other taxes to be disposed off:
1) Paper & Coin money is stopped, only debit cards or electronic transfers allowed to transfer funds from bank account to bank account.
2) Every entity has to have two statutory types of bank account, a capital and revenue account
3) The revenue bank accounts monthly income is skimmed a set % by the government, the rate only altering say if the entity is flesh and blood or corporate.
It only took me 5 minutes mind you, whilst I was eating my Pasty, so there might be flaws?
Uh?
I have just arrived back in the UK from a few days abroad, having avoided UK newspapers while I was away. Local TV gave us all the doom and gloom about Syria, Israel's threat to attack Iran and the demise of the Euro zone.
I get back to Heathrow and find the Times front page trumpeting the u-turn on the pasty tax.
I have to assume that either nothing has happened in the UK recently, or - and I fear more likely - the Government PR machine is happy for the news to be dominated by nonsense like pasty taxes while more drastic stuff is quietly implemented unnoticed! Have they buried all the bad news?