Irish court: Subway bread is not bread at all
The product must be classified as a sweet
05-Oct-2020
- Ireland
Sandwiches sold by the US chain Subway are not bread but candy, according to the highest Irish court. The sugar content clearly exceeds the limits for bread in Ireland, the Irish Supreme Court in Dublin found.
This limit is laid down in Irish tax legislation: Basic foodstuffs are therefore exempt from VAT, including bread. However, bread may contain a maximum amount of sugar so that its weight does not exceed two percent of the weight of flour. In the case of Subway sandwiches, however, this proportion is around ten percent, the court explained this week. The product must therefore be classified as a sweet.
The court had to deal with this question because the Irish Subway franchise Bookfinders had argued that the sandwiches should be exempt from VAT. The company therefore believed that it had paid too much tax and was entitled to a refund. However, the judgement did not allow it to do so. The US-based Subway chain has branches in more than 100 countries around the world./swe/DP/eas (dpa)
This limit is laid down in Irish tax legislation: Basic foodstuffs are therefore exempt from VAT, including bread. However, bread may contain a maximum amount of sugar so that its weight does not exceed two percent of the weight of flour. In the case of Subway sandwiches, however, this proportion is around ten percent, the court explained this week. The product must therefore be classified as a sweet.
The court had to deal with this question because the Irish Subway franchise Bookfinders had argued that the sandwiches should be exempt from VAT. The company therefore believed that it had paid too much tax and was entitled to a refund. However, the judgement did not allow it to do so. The US-based Subway chain has branches in more than 100 countries around the world./swe/DP/eas (dpa)
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Note: This article has been translated using a computer system without human intervention. LUMITOS offers these automatic translations to present a wider range of current news. Since this article has been translated with automatic translation, it is possible that it contains errors in vocabulary, syntax or grammar. The original article in German can be found here.
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