no news can be good news (sometimes)

So we've been waiting a while to find out what the government was going to do in this budget. This time last year, they said (buried deep in the small print) that they'd look into 'modernising and clarifying VAT legislation' on non-alcoholic drinks. And 20,000 of you kindly signed a petition to say you think it's a bit odd to tax healthy juices and smoothies, when all sorts of other food is zero-rated.

If any of you are experts in reading budget reports, we'd love to see if they did say anything about taxing juices and smoothies. But we don't think they did. This weekend Vince Cable announced in his speech that he thought it might be a good idea to tax a little bit more on alcohol, and use that money to pay for a reduction in tax on juice. We definitely heard the bit in the budget speech today about pints costing more. But we didn't hear Mr Darling say anything about spending that money on encouraging people to get more fruit on board. Maybe he'll announce that another day. In the meantime, thanks to all of you for helping us with our petition. And don't worry. We haven't given up just yet...

Comments

[Nicola]

Ok, how about I signed yours - you sign mine?

I'm petitioning the prime minister to help part-time students as much as they do full-time students with financial help and support.

Please visit this link http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/parttimestudent/ and sign up to my petition.

...any spare cash in my pocket will help to buy your delicious smoothies!!

Thank you so much
Nicola

[Oliver Dowding]

Well, fantastic news about getting the VAT rate for smoothies down to 5%. Heard it yesterday and again on the news this morning.
Hoooooraayyyy!
Albeit that 5% is too high - given so few people have even a vaguely healthy diet - over 70% consume LESS than 5-a-day.
Still this comes hot on the heels of my winning my case over the Revenue to get wheatgrass juice recognised as a food and thus zero-rated. Well, actually we hope to end up with it exempted altogether, like many foods.
Its a shame we had to be taken through the mill, so to speak, to have massive costs (hope to recover most) and huge delays to getting my fledgling business going.
We are now at the proverbial drawing board plotting the next moves!
So, 3 juicy cheers from all to you all at Fruit Towers!
And 3 cheers from Tonic Attack to add to it!

[Hannah Dobson]

Unfortunately the Budget, and the background papers were completely silent on reducing the rate of VAT on smoothies. It would appear that the campaign must continue.

[Tim Scarfe]

I was horrified when I saw your e-petition at the top of the list at the government web site. I think you should be ashamed of yourselves and take it down immediately.

Any nutritionist would already be highly annoyed that your company puts so much spin on a drink that is only vaguely nutritious yet ridiculously acidic and high in sugar/calories.

Take it down or I will create a new e-petition to get it taken down. Have you no shame?

[hannah at innocent]

Hello Tim

Thank you very much for your comment.

At the moment, nine out of ten children and two out of three adults in the UK don’t get their five pieces of fruit and veg a day. Our smoothies contain two portions of fruit, and we estimate that if the VAT on smoothies were to be reduced to 5% an extra one billion portions of fruit could be consumed each year. So far 20,000 people have signed our online petition.

All the sugar in our smoothies is naturally occuring in the fruit, so it won’t give you the sharp spike that you might get from sugar you’d put in your tea.

We’re sorry that you disagree with what we’re doing, and if you’d like to have a chat about this please give me a call via the banana phone (020 8600 3939).

All the best

Hannah