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Pay up for that Pepsi | Peter Preston Peter Preston (World news: United States | guardian.co.uk)
impost, unrefined, oblivious to health or environmental imperatives, when a little fine tuning shows the way? Submitted at 3/14/2010 12:00:02 PM Instead of a blanket hike on We know "food of a kind used VAT, a targeted tax on fizzy for human consumption" is zero drinks could raise money and -rated – but we also know that save lives too much human consumption The idea is alive and living in leads to an early grave. We New York state. Sugary canned acknowledge that in the rising drinks ruin your teeth and make price of beer and cigarettes, yet y o u f a t . T h e r e f o r e , l i k e there the logic of cost and everything else that palpably constraint runs out. You can hurts health, they should attract wade through the minutiae of extra taxation: say one penny the VAT rules for hours without per ounce, around 20% more on ever encountering an argument a a 75-cent can of sweet soda. Of doctor might salute. c o u r s e t h e n o t i o n i s n ' t The inspectors standard-rate universally popular. Fox News crisps, fizzy drinks, ice cream. is against, as it is against almost But tortilla chips, milk shakes, every policy supported by frozen yogurt (if it melts) escape Barack Obama. But at least scot-free. A bottle of mineral nobody can sing the "pain" song water rakes in 17.5%; a jar of too easily. You can't talk pain prunes in armagnac takes over a swig of Pepsi. One nothing on top. reason, perhaps, why Alistair Maybe, at first sight, a taxing Darling should get interested. obsession with chocolate in Is VAT going up to 20% under every shape or form has keeping whoever rules the Treasury fit somewhere in its rationale. next? It's a solid, sullen bet. Yet Expect standard rate on "biscuits why use this tax as a blanket wholly or partly covered in
chocolate or some product similar in taste or appearance" – except "chocolate chip biscuits where the chips are either included in the dough or pressed into the surface before baking". In fact, though, health takes a back seat the moment you find that spreading caramel all over shortbread attracts no charge, that chocolate chips to sprinkle on cakes come duty free (unlike chocolate buttons), that Bourbon biscuits with chocolate cream in the middle pass no-taxation muster. Health really isn't an issue in any of this introverted detail. When I wander down to a supermarket and pick up a lunchtime chicken sandwich shot through with salt and saturated fats, the VAT man looks the other way. When I reach into the chiller cabinet and pull out a pizza or a packet of burgers, then the needs of "human consumption" have the last word. Frozen mousses, toffee apples, prawn crackers ... welcome to the club. But don't
confuse standard-rated ice cream wafers with zero-rated communion wafers, or you'll end up in the mire. Any bureaucratic list built up over decades is open to ridicule, perhaps. But the disconnect between public policy and current concern right along the VAT chain is painfully clear. (And not just on the edible side either: Britain's reluctance to put a "tax on knowledge" – ie books, newspapers and magazines – means that all those lads mags and porn specials escape tax; under cover, presumably, of what Richard Desmond might call a "tax on carnal knowledge".) But let's not worry about no VAT on bingo club memberships and houseboat moorings, for the moment. There will always be another budget to clear up the peripheries. Let's stay with Mayor Bloomberg of New York, talking soda taxes in a city where nearly 40% of school -age children are overweight,
with "diabetes, heart disease, asthma and depression" lying in wait. Let's save many more lives than any new drink-driving purge. Let's send hundreds of millions more to our Treasury in the best of all possible causes – one where personal gain trumps minimal pain. For, as those self-same VAT regulations conclude: "Burial or cremation of dead people – exempt." • Budget • United States • Food & drink • Barack Obama • Children • Tax • Obesity • Health & wellbeing Peter Preston guardian.co.uk© Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions| More Feeds