Very odd

basically it means a tax on hot food to take out. Or rather, food that is cooked on a premises and then kept warm. So, if you buy a pasty which has been baked on the premises but then left on a shelf to cool, you do not pay the tax, even if it was just put on the shelf twenty seconds ago and is still piping hot. If you buy a pasty cooked on the premises and left on a heated plate, you pay the tax. Bloody stupid.

I am guessing not, a £1 price hike is a bit much for just a tax difference. I suspect the hot ones sell better and if they don't get sold when hot they are sold off cheaper after they are past their most desirable and cooled off. There is only so long they can keep them hot safely.

A pound in tax? That is an extra 25% or something?

That's a lot!

In 1950, it was very simple. Good, honest working men bought their joints of beef, potatoes and vegetables at the grocer's shop and their wives cooked them at home, whilst the toffs ate their food in restaurants in full view of their workforce. Some government or other - I forget which - decided that said toffs should pay VAT on their food at 17.5%, as it was then, whilst the good, honest workers should pay zero tax on their food because they were the backbone of society.

Fish and Chip shops were a bit of an anomoly because the good, honest workers used to buy their fish and chips hot and eat them at home. But they weren't eating them on the premises and wouldn't be able to sneer through the window at workers who couldn't afford fish and chips, so they avoided paying VAT.

The pasty tax aimed to make this more equitable so that it didn't matter whether you sat in the window at the Fish and Chip shop and sneered at your fellow workers or took your fish and chips home. You still had to pay VAT.

It's called the pasty tax because 'fish and chip tax' would be too emotive and because more pasties are sold than fish and chips.

Yeah, and I can't imagine why they'd tax those!

The main problem was that the government tried to introduce such a massive hike overnight on a product bought by a particular demographic. I already think that the kind of stuff that Greggs sells (including pasties) is too expensive, let alone smacking 20% on top.

The most horrific thing that happened after were the main political parties trying to look like they were "ordinary people" and going into pastie shops to buy some (in front of the massed press). They made total fools of themselves, not even knowing who or where to pay. It was hideously cringeworthy but, being so out of touch, they don't seem to realise how artificial it looked.
The ultimate fail was David Cameron telling his pastie story, which sounded like he was reading copy in the first place and then (surprise, surprise) turning out to be a total fabrication as the shop he had been "reminiscing" about had closed many years previously to when he had claimed to have gone there. This is the kind of B$ that would have had him evicted under my regime!

That's embarrassing!

It's safe to google 'pasty' but not 'pasties'.

So wait, is it so that there is no tax on other food in the UK?

Ah, that explains quite a bit. Here food is at 14% (general VAT is 24%).

Blimey! There was outrage here when it went up from 17.5% to 20%! 24% seems very high!

The general one here was 23% last year, and the food one at 13%, they went up at the New Year. The one for books went from 9% to 10%.

But for me it explains why foodstuffs are so cheap in England.

We also have both categories, things like exported stuff is at 0% and schooling, funerals, lottery wins and for some reason fees of performing artists are completely exempt.
Maybe it is legally easier for the lawmakers to raise the percentage of the 0% category if needed than to change the status of a category altogether?