Walkers' Sensations Poppadoms vs. HMRC: The Chip of Theseus

Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. When does a potato cease to be a potato? It’s a question that has plagued some of Britain’s finest legal minds for at least some time this year. Last January, FT Alphaville treated readers to 3,400 crunchy words on Walkers Snack Foods Ltd v Commissioners for His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, a First-Tier Tax Tribunal case concerning Walkers’ attempts to get VAT taken off their Sensations Poppadoms products. HMRC — the UK’s tax authority — had slapped Sensations Poppadoms with a standard 20 per cent duty, on the grounds that they fell within the non-exempt category that includes: potato crisps, potato sticks, potato puffs, and similar products made from the potato, or from potato flour, or from potato starch Walkers, attempting to avoid the levy, argued without success that the products were actually more akin to conventional poppadoms, which are zero rated as a foodstuff. Just over a year af ... Read full article.