Comment by Pawka

1 day ago

Sounds insane. But what is more surprising to me - is why dolls were taxed differently than other toys. At first glance, it looks like stupid rules force to play silly games.

Some trade war from the XIX century or something? Or maybe because dolls were historically thought for girls?

In India, the pizza base has a different tax rate than the topping and so some restaurants will have two separate lines on your pizza bill - one for the base at 5% tax and another for the topping at 18% tax.

The tax on popcorn is also totally crazy. "Unpackaged and unlabelled popcorn with salt and spices is categorised as 'namkeen' and taxed at 5%. Pre-packed and labelled ready-to-eat popcorn attracts a 12% GST rate. Caramelized popcorn with added sugar is taxed at a higher rate of 18%."

  • All those make sense and are pretty common: bread is taxed lower than most pizza toppings.

    Raw ingredients are taxed less than ready-to-eat or sugar-coated ultra-processed good. And I'm totally ok with that.

  • The pizza thing seemed incredibly silly to me. Surely the restaurant has already paid the tax when they bought the raw ingredients? Must any product served in a restaurant be taxed according to the rate of the most highly taxed ingredient in it, regardless of proportion?

    So I looked it up. And yes, that is exactly the case, and it's an absurd situation that is causing massive headaches.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-63281037

This. It’s a pretty reasonable answer to a stupid question. Dolls depict people.