Products that should be zero-rated for VAT

[PrettyCandles]

Sanitary pads
Toilet paper
Chocolate

None of these are luxury items!

Cake.

A nice Pinot Noir.

Cake is zero-rated.

Nappies

It should be lowered on essentials like home electricity and gas

Green & Black's chocolate ice cream
Closer magazine

It is expat

telephone bills

Goes without saying but - shoes

I think any kind of fruit / veg should be VAT free... (it is isnt it)
I also think that 'healthy' foods should be VAT free.... and crap filled junk should have LOADS of tax on it

I think VAT on nappiers should increase to encoutage a switch to reusables...

Loo roll should be VAT free tho

Anything that we all KNOW is essential. Maybe if we all stopped using deodorant, soap, toothpaste and sanitary towels for a while as well as letting our babies roam around in the nude, things would change. Or if men had periods. I'm off to whinge in my corner now ...

loo roll is not essential. most of the world gets by on water, or a big leaf.
sanitary pads are not essential. a was of cotton, such as an old t shirt works just as well, and since it is washed again and again, far cheaper.
ditto nappies
electricity and gas are not essentials either. for 99% of human history we havent had either, and managed to survive . lots of people in the world still dont. and they survive.

the only essential i see suggested here is chocolate...... that cannot be lived without.

Interesting, how many people here who use reusanle nappies use reuseable cloth instead of sanitary pads.

Biscuits are vatable, cake is not. Anyone know about Jaffa cakes. Is it a cake or a biscuit?

stitch im with you no vat on chocolate

there was a whole court case on the jaffa cake thing...its a cake coz of the spongey bit

There is apparently an 'official' EU definition of cake V biscuit: a cake gets harder when it is stale, whereas a biscuit gets softer. Jaffa cakes get harder when they are stale therefore they are biscuits and non-VATable.

BUT, they are covered in chocolate and therefore luxury biscuits, so VATable. The argument between McVities (I think?) and the VATman continues.