Ireland's highest court made the ruling in a case about how the bread is taxed.
An Irish franchisee of the US company had claimed it should not pay VAT on the rolls it uses in heated sandwiches.
But the court ruled that because of the level of sugar in the rolls they cannot be taxed as bread, which is classed as a "staple product" with zero VAT.
Under Ireland's VAT Act of 1972, ingredients in bread such as sugar and fat should not exceed 2% of the weight of flour in the dough.
I realize this is a tax issue but if it is not bread then what is it? A cookie or biscuit as you call them?
My real question is will the Subway owners just cut the sugar to flour ratio to come into compliance or pay the tax. Seems odd having a batch of judges decide what a cook uses for a recipe.
Our VAT and duty laws have been a surreal game of ping pong since the window tax. Before VAT there was a sales tax that differed for industrial and consumer parts.
The designer of some famous 60s British speaker parts once told me that B139 was born after the company rang someone clueless in gov and asked what the smallest driver size was that could still be industrial [lower tax]. The clueless gov employee said 13 x 9 inches...
360 mls of water
2 tablespoons of veg oil
2 teaspoons of salt
2 teaspoons of sugar
550 grams of plain flour
3 teaspoons of wheat gluten
2 teaspoons of yeast
Last edited by Little John on Thu Oct 01, 2020 10:12 pm, edited 1 time in total.
careful_eugene wrote:I can't get past the 10% sugar content in the bread.
It's a lot. My homebaked bread has 1.5tsp sugar to 500g flour, 1.25tsp salt, 3 tbsp olive oil, 350cc water and 1tsp dried yeast.
It's good. The olive oil makes a great replacement for butter.
I can do metric and I can do English measurements but get annoyed when people mix the two. I have seen some major errors on construction projects from just that.
How many grams of sugar are in a teaspoon? I can look it up and do the conversion but until I do I will not know what you have said. If you want to communicate efficiently do everything in just one system.
And no I don't need the mental exercise if that was you purpose.
careful_eugene wrote:I can't get past the 10% sugar content in the bread.
It's a lot. My homebaked bread has 1.5tsp sugar to 500g flour, 1.25tsp salt, 3 tbsp olive oil, 350cc water and 1tsp dried yeast.
It's good. The olive oil makes a great replacement for butter.
I can do metric and I can do English measurements but get annoyed when people mix the two. I have seen some major errors on construction projects from just that.
How many grams of sugar are in a teaspoon? I can look it up and do the conversion but until I do I will not know what you have said. If you want to communicate efficiently do everything in just one system.
And no I don't need the mental exercise if that was you purpose.
vtsnowedin wrote:.......Seems odd having a batch of judges decide what a cook uses for a recipe.
It's not the judges deciding on the recipe, it's the company deciding how much tax they want to avoid paying.
Subway put extra sugar into the bread to get more customers through sugar addiction and governments tax that extra sugar to pay for the obesity and tooth decay that they have to treat through the company's use of an addictive substance to boost their profits. In a way it's just the free market working.
In the US the government doesn't worry about the health of their people, they just leave it too the market. People get fat so health providers make more money if people can afford the insurance. If they can't afford the insurance they go broke and insolvency practitioners of various sorts make money. In the end the poor sods who are sugar addicted pay either with the money they earn or with their lives, in which case the undertaker makes some money. The business owned US government doesn't bother as long as some one makes some money. The sugar addicts have a choice after all.
kenneal - lagger wrote: The sugar addicts have a choice after all.
Exactly. It is a free country and no one is forced to consume any product addictive or not. In fact it is when the government tries to be a Nanny and ban some addictive consumption like marijuana where trouble arises.
On the other hand I do think the tobacco companies should be on the hook for the cost of treating the lung cancer and heart disease their products lead to.
Perhaps a registration of customers and $1.00 a pack set aside through the customers consuming lifetime held in their name.
kenneal - lagger wrote: The sugar addicts have a choice after all.
Exactly. It is a free country and no one is forced to consume any product addictive or not. In fact it is when the government tries to be a Nanny and ban some addictive consumption like marijuana where trouble arises.
On the other hand I do think the tobacco companies should be on the hook for the cost of treating the lung cancer and heart disease their products lead to.
Perhaps a registration of customers and $1.00 a pack set aside through the customers consuming lifetime held in their name.
So, remind me of the different criteria you are employing between taxing tobacco companies for the damage their product does and taxing companies the load up their product with sugar with the damage their product does?
Little John wrote:A typical daily loaf in my house
360 mls of water
2 tablespoons of veg oil
2 teaspoons of salt
2 teaspoons of sugar
550 grams of plain flour
3 teaspoons of wheat gluten
2 teaspoons of yeast
What does the wheat gluten add ? I use "strong bread flour", perhaps it has more gluten in it than plain flour.
Supermarket plain flour and strong bread flour only differ in the amount of gluten they have.
The function of yeast is to make bread rise as it consumes the sugar and excretes carbon dioxide. The function of gluten in bread making is to provide a membrane around the carbon dioxide bubbles created by the yeast. In doing so, it means the bread, once risen, does not then immediately collapse as the carbon dioxide rapidly escapes. Which is what happens with plain flour that is low in gluten.
I simply buy plain flour and wheat gluten separately and increase the gluten in the plain flour myself. It is significantly cheaper than buying "strong bread flour" in the supermarkets.
I can get plain flour at about 15 pence worth for a large loaf (550 grams) plus about another 5 pence worth of gluten added (3 teaspoons). With the 2 teaspoons of salt, two teaspoons of sugar, two teaspoons of yeast and 2 tablespoons of oil, I am guessing that comes in well under 30 pence a loaf (excluding the cost of fuel for baking). Though, I have never exactly worked it out.
Basically:
A 1.5kg pack of plain flour makes two loafs with about 400grams of flour left over. I can get one of those packs for 50p
A 1kg pack of what gluten can be had for about £3.50. This will last a fair old time. I haven't worked out exactly how long. But, it must be north of 50 loafs. I am basing that rough assumption on how long a pack of gluten lasts me and how many loafs I bake a week (which is about 3).
Edit to add:
I have just found out my bread maker is costing between 5p and 10p pence per loaf.
That seems very low. But, having checked on a few forums, they all say the same thing. Around 5p-10p per loaf.
