The only qualities required for success in journalism are, as the late Nick Tomalin said, “ratlike cunning, a plausible manner, and a little literary ability”.
In the Tesco Superstore, we brought all three to bear.
By rights, we shouldn’t ever have been there. But we were. Products keep happening: one of the latest is Tesco’s birthday cake sandwich, released this week:
In the wake of sandogate, an obvious question was bound to arise: is THIS sandwich also a potential future subject of a tax dispute?
Chapter 1: Tax Britannica
If you didn’t read our piece last week, here are the broad strokes of a recent ‘debate’ around the Marks and Spencer ‘Red Diamond™ Strawberry & Creme on soft sweetened bread’ (RDSC), which launched earlier this summer:
— Under UK law, many products and services are subject to Value Added Tax, a consumption tax with a standard rate of 20 per cent.
— There is a broad exemption for foodstuffs, which are zero-rated as standard.
— There are exemptions to this exemption for some foods, such as potato crisps, which carry VAT at the standard rate.
— “Cold sandwiches” and most cakes are among the foods that HM Revenue & Customs, Britain’s tax authority, specifies are zero-rated.
— However, confectionery (sweetened products eaten with the fingers) are standard-rated.
— The RDSC is probably a sandwich, and if so would be zero-rated (something which would be up to M&S to decide).
— Some people have suggested that the RDSC may (or should) end up classed as confectionery.
— If HMRC agreed with that assessment, it could challenge M&S.
One of our frustrations with the RDSC was a lack of starting information: no one seems to know, and M&S wouldn’t tell us, whether it even is being treated as a sandwich. We think it plainly is: not all of you agreed.
Enter the Tesco birthday cake sandwich.
The £3, limited-edition product has been described by reviewers at both the Guardian and the Telegraph as “an abomination”. Tesco declined to comment. A person familiar with the supermarket’s thinking told us by email:
The Tesco Birthday Cake Sandwich is a limited edition sandwich made with brioche style bread, strawberry jam and a cream cheese filling with rainbow sprinkles
So, a little like the Japanese Victoria sponge sando we included at the bottom of our last piece. And, yes, fundamentally cursed.
What’s a blog to do? Back from a trip to the land of our forebears, and having checked out the new boys, we arrived to find our inbox more stuffed, sandwich-style, with emails flagging this culinary development to us.
And this time, we were determined to get some facts.
Part deux: In which journalism is committed
In an attempt to determine whether the M&S sando carried VAT, we went to a shop and bought one, hoping that the receipt might offer some clues. Sadly, it did not, and the company declined to disclose how it was being treated.
Tesco, likewise, were unwilling to give us an answer. But heading to our local large branch, we had armed ourselves with new information: if you take a till receipt to the customer services desk, they will give you a VAT receipt.
Our problem, however, was immediate — upon reaching the food to go section, we found the birthday cake sandwiches had already been cleared out.
Initially, we were despondent, but then we had an idea.
A few minutes later, we were on the far side of the self-service tills holding a no-mayo cheese sandwich (£1.50) and the receipt for one “Tesco Birthday Cake Style Sandwich” (an interesting choice of name).
After a quick chat with customer services, we had lightly padded Tesco’s margins, and secured a generational scoop.
People and tax officials, Tesco is not charging VAT on the birthday cake sandwich:
As you can see, the £3 component of our shop (the cake sandwich incurred no VAT), but the Squares crisps we bought did.
Section Three: Tax holes and revelations
What does it all mean? Unarguably, very little: we suspect the M&S sando is zero-VAT, and we know the Tesco one is.
Does this herald an epic court battle? It certainly keeps the possibility open — as we wrote last week, HMRC is unlikely to bother fighting to remove VAT from an item.
We asked HMRC if they were looking at either of these sandwiches. A spokesperson said, “I’m afraid we don’t really have much we can say on this”, while a source close to the department told us HMRC would not comment on an identifiable business.
Everything continues, therefore, to exist largely in the realm of the hypothetical. So let’s head there. In our previous piece, we argued that the M&S sando was clearly a sandwich.
And here’s our take on the birthday cake sandwich: it is even more clearly a sandwich than M&S’s.
Let’s explain our reasoning. Primarily, we reckon this is a sandwich in the same crucial ways the RSDC is:
1) It is a sandwich.
2) It contains a reasonable amount and type of food inside parallel pieces of bread.
But Tesco’s birthday cake sandwich has what we reckon could be a further claim to sandwichicity: it’s part of the meal deal. As such, it can be bought alongside a drink and snack specifically in the same slot where one might otherwise buy a cheese sandwich, or a chicken wrap, or one of the many other “mains” available.
This feels important to the circumstances of consumption point we raised about the RDSC: this sandwich is explicitly being sold as something you eat at the same time you would eat any other sandwich.
Does any of this matter? Not in the slightest, but we’ve expanded human understanding very slightly without actually having to eat one of these monstrosities, so that’s got to be a plus.
Further Tescoing:
— The UK’s inflation figures were wrong and now we just have to live with that
— What rhymes with ‘fresco’ and possibly skewed Britain’s employment data?
#Heres #words #Tescos #birthday #cake #sandwich #concern #tastes
