"It's a piece of cake" declared Marks and Spencer; "that really takes the biscuit" replied the UK government. Ending 20 years of bickering, the European Court of Justice has handed Her Majesty's government a bill for £3.5M for wrongly charging VAT on Marks and Spencer teacakes.
The dispute centred around whether M&S teacakes are "biscuits" or "cakes". A chocolate covered biscuit is subject to VAT while a cake is not. Now the legal battle has been settled in M&S's favour. "But", HM Government protests; "to whom should the £3.5M be paid?" Marks and Spencer collected the tax from its customers over a period of 20 years. "It would be unfair to enrich M&S by £3.5M" the government claims.
The mandarins of Europe have left it to the UK court system to decide how the money should be repaid.
For the record, Blighty's sold a lot of M&S teacakes last year and we didn't charge our customers one single groat in VAT!
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