Comment by pkphilip

1 day ago

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%."

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pkphilip

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xandrius  1 day ago

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.

  • jonhohle  1 day ago

    But a pizza as a whole is a ready-to-eat good. And a pizza isn’t a pizza without the crust.

    • xandrius  1 day ago

      What I think is happening is that the place is specifically charging different tax rates for each part of the pizza. That does seem odd but the alternative would be to tax the whole of the pizza at a higher tax rate than the one presented. Example, most countries might put a whole pizza at, say, 10% VAT, while here part of it is at, say, 4% and the rest at 10%. Ideally that's cheaper.

dTal  1 day ago

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