Taxidermy: Getting under the skin of a tax lawyer

‘There is nothing – absolutely nothing – half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.’ (Kenneth Grahame, ‘The Wind in the Willows’)

It recently took 53 pages for a Tribunal to explain why takeaway toasted Subs and meatball marinara filling, as sold by fast-food outlet Subway, are subject to VAT.

The UK rules tax a supply of food and drink ‘in the course of catering’ and this includes the sale of hot food and drink for consumption off the premises. In the Subway case the test to be applied therefore boiled down to whether or not the products were ‘hot food’.

The Chinese Year of the Rabbit began on 3 February and, being a lunar year, ends on 22 January 2012. According to Wikipedia, those born in the Year of the Rabbit are lucky, amiable and self-assured but can also be detached, superficial and opportunistic.

‘When people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together.’ (Isaac Asimov, ‘The Relativity of Wrong’)

‘I had that Christopher Marlowe in my boat once.’ (Taxi-Boatman in ‘Shakespeare in Love’, screenplay by Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard)

It seems from an article in the Daily Telegraph that the story of London black cabs really did begin on the Thames.