A small restaurant with an alcohol license has recently applied for VAT, can I ask as this is now so confusing.
are the sales of the food based at 20% or the reduced rate of 5% increasing to 12.5% or just standard across the board for bookkeeping purposes! Sorry it's all so confusing now as the temporary 12.5% is only in for 6 months and as she is a small cafe which offers hot food to take away and also has the restaurant she is unsure on the VAT any advice would be greatly helpful
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Have you read VAT Notice 709/1 (Catering, takeaway food)?
You beat me to it DavidEx, people just don't want to read anymore it seems.
You may also find parts of 701/14 useful.
Broad rules:
On site: 5% rising to 12.5% rising to 20%. Alcohol 20% throughout.
Takeaway: Hot: As On site
Cold: Zero rated unless always standard rated
Buy a healthy meal of burger, packet of crisps and a packet of twiglets.
On site: All 5% currently.
Off site: Burger 5%, crisps 20%, twiglets 0%
Thank heavens it's a simple tax. :-)
Potato crisps = standard rated,
Not potato based crisps = generally zero rated
Hence the growth in vegetable and maize based snacks, no VAT but just as expensive (if not more expensive) as a potato based crisp.
Thanks Jason,
Mrs I'msorry has pointed out that they taste of Marmite, not Bovril. My bad - I seem to recall Bovril flavoured crisps some years back. Urghh!
Marmite is a French word for cooking pot (or cauldron), which is the shape of the jar that Marmite comes in and the logo on the label shows an actual cooking pot....so when people use marmite in conversation like "I don't like that actor, they're a bit marmite", they're actually saying "that actor, they're a bit like a cooking pot", which I think still works :)
According to my copy of Cockney Rhyming Slang for Dummies, "marmite" is rhyming slang for rubbish, nonsense ("sh*te") which also works quite well for me and my taste buds ;-)
Interesting - don't twiglets count as crisps?
Healthy option! Baked not fried and high fibre.
Neil Warren has been prolific on this topic since the reduced rates were first introduced last year. His example was based around a pub meal of a sandwich, some chips and a beer.
His latest article goes into a bit more detail about how to get ready for the 12.5% rate: https://www.accountingweb.co.uk/tax/business-tax/get-ready-for-125-vat
Good luck everyone with implementing the latest changes. We really are getting to the far reaches of over-complication here (and don't mention all the post-Brexit EU trading VAT issues... thank your lucky stars the client won't be exporting the burger & twiglets!)