There's no Justice !
harrym,
The tax-on-tax "scam" predated VAT - it applied in the earlier Purchase Tax days, too. I must have bought my Renault 16 in tne first quarter of '73, for I remember that I paid Import Duty of 11% (I think) and then a hefty Purchase Tax on the sum of the import price plus Import duty. Daylight Robbery !
It was this that meant that the Peugeot I bought in France when I was posted to RAF(G) in '60 cost me only a basic £520, while in UK the same car was £1050 !
VAT replaced Purchase Tax on 1st April '73, but we only did "Educational Visits" to firms for the rest of the year (luring them into a sense of false security ?) before showing our teeth in '74.
I hadn't much experience of PSP (the noise terrified me - sounded as if the a/c was falling apart), because we could only operate in cloudless skies (the dog must see the rabbit !), so we were happy on our kutcha strips in the dry season and didn't need it. When the pre-monsoon clouds built up, we decamped to paved strips in W.Bengal, and it would be then that the Daks, Beaus and Hurricanes needed PSP in the Monsoon.
When the clouds had cleared and the mud strips had dried out, we went back to them......D.
Warmtoast,
Your Table gives the reduced VAT rates for certain categories of goods. All other goods (and all services) were taxable at the Standard Rate (except that some goods were taxable, but at the Zero Rate. And some services were Exempt. (It starts to get a bit complicated after that, but that was the state of play when I started in '73 (IIRC). From there it just built up.
There was a tiny sweetener. If you'd bought goods from another EU member, and paid VAT at Standard rate (which might be less than the Uk Standard rate), you didn't have to pay any difference when you got home (we're all Heart !). .....D.
Chugalug,
Your: "The then Conservative Chancellor Lord Barber". You may recall that, having organised gainful employment to earn a modest crust after leaving the RAF, I was debarred from picking up a £1000 "Disturbance Allowance" granted to those on the Unemployed Register who'd found a job in another area off their own bat, simply because I'd found mine before I'd "signed on" !
I appealed this monstrous decision to the said Lord Anthony Barber, but got no joy. You seem to have been in a similar case. There's always a snag in the Fine Print !......D.
All the best to you all in the New Year !
Danny.