Fast-food shops try to beat V.A.T.

Press, 3 May 1984, Page 10

Fast-food shops try to beat V.A.T.

NZPA-AAP London British storekeepers are devising ingenious methods to avoid adding the British Government’s 15 per cent value added tax on hot takeaway food. A Derbyshire storekeeper, Nick Hambis, for instance, gives away one portion of fish and chips with every breadroll you buy. The catch is that the breadroll costs 88 pence ($1.88). “The Customs and Excise people have decreed that bread is not a hot food, so as far as I am concerned we are acting perfectly legally,” he said. “My normal price for fish and chips was 85 pence ($1.82). Now they are paying 3 pence (6c) extra. “But if I had added on V.A.T.. it would have risen

to 97 pence ($2.07).” The 15 per cent V.A.T. on hot takeway food was imposed in the recent Budget and came into force yesterday. “I have a lot of elderly people on pensions and kids on the dole as customers,” said Mr Hambis. “I am not prepared to charge them so much.” In Cheltenham Ken Snow’s shop charges 2 pence (4c) for cod and chips and 83 pence ($1.77) for salt and vinegar. “If they decide I am infringing the law, I will think of another way of beating the tax,” said Mr Snow. Despite these and similar methods, the fast-food industry fears that 3000 shops will close because of the V.A.T.