Dave Plowman (News) wrote
Tim Watts wrote

No - but apparently we cannot VAT exempt a class of items as we wish (eg
like books, children's clothes other "essential" items used to be zero
VAT rated).

As a matter of interest, why should books be zero rated?

Its one thing that leftys usually do want to be zero rated. We went
that way too, essentially because our most extremely lefty oriented
minor party that happened to have the balance of power in the Senate
demanded that as a quid pro quo to pass our equivalent of your VAT.

They are hardly an essential item.

It isnt just essential items that are zero rated.

And why children's clothes?

Again, typical lefty stuff.

Are all parents necessarily poorer than adults who buy clothes?

Those with kids are usually poorer than those who don’t have
kids, particularly when they are on benefits, because of the cost
of the kids.

IIRC, the UK government can set the individual VAT rate anyway.

Not anymore now that the EU is attempting to see uniform
VAT rates EU wide so that particular countrys can't play silly
buggers and have operations like Amazon base in their
country to take advantage of the lower VAT rate there etc.

The main area they haven't yet been able to do that with
is the excise dutys etc on stuff like grog and cigarettes etc
and that does see what is essentially very counter productive
stuff in the EU with people coming back from places like
France with their cars stuffed with grog and fags etc. It
really doesn’t make much economic sense to have that stuff.