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Comment by Pawka

3 months 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.

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