These just showed up at my grocery store in America. I was watching a replay of Glastonbury 2024 and someone had a flag “Jaffa Cakes Are Biscuits.” Whats the controversy?

by AgentNose

7 comments

  1. Cakes are exempt from Value Added Tax (VAT) at 20%

    Biscuits are not.

    McVities the maker or Jaffa Cakes (the branded ones) went to court after HMRC tried to add VAT to Jaffa cakes.

    They stated in court that cakes get hard when going off and biscuits get soft when going off.

    They also made a giant Jaffa cake to prove it was a cake.

    Jaffa cakes are therefore able to be sold without VAT and appear cheaper to consumers meaning they snag more market share.

    EDIT: u/WelshBathBoy has informed me correctly that non chocolate biscuits do not have VAT, but chocolate (covered not flavoured) biscuits do. Thanks pal!

  2. There are some complex tax laws regarding cakes, biscuits and chocolate-covered biscuits, where luxuries are taxed more.

    There was a long-running court case and one of the arguments made was that biscuits go soft when they go bad and cakes go hard.

  3. They are cakes. If they were sold as biscuits they would be subject to “Biscuit Tax”. Cakes are 0% VAT. Whereas Biscuits have VAT attached. This means Jaffa cakes maintain a lower price point than a comparable biscuit.

  4. It’s the difference between what constitutes a ’cake’ and a ‘biscuit’.
    The flag is siding with the argument that they should be called Jaffa biscuits.
    My approach is that they harden when they go stale, which is what cakes do- biscuits tend to go soft when they become stale. I’m a cakist.
    I’m sure there is also some classification that is tax related, but can’t remember how that affected the discourse.
    You could be opening a can of worms here, just be warned.

  5. British people get to the age of about 25 and pick random things such as this and make it their entire personality.

    Other examples- liking marmite. Not being able to function without a Cup of tea, the harry Potter house they got assigned to at the age of 14 after doing a buzz feed quiz, love island, gregs, McDonalds chicken nuggets, and the Chinese takeaway they use.

  6. With food in the UK, some of it has tax on it, some of it doesn’t.

    The very layman’s way of describing it is:

    Essential food is tax-free.

    Luxury food is taxed.

    Examples of some essential foods with 0 tax are of course: tea, coffee, milk, bread, raw meat and fish etc. But of course, this is the UK, and we like things *with* our essential tea and coffee… that also includes biscuits and cakes.

    **However.**

    Nothing says pure filthy indulgence and luxury like covering yourself in chocolate, does it?

    So the law is that any biscuit is partly or wholly *covered* in chocolate, which is a luxury, and there is taxed – currently whacking on 20%. (And for biscuit fans, it does have to be on the *outside*, unlike, say, a Bourbon, which is tax-free as that’s on the inside…)

    “But what about cakes covered in chocolate?” I hear you cry!

    Nope. They’re still essential in the eyes of the tax man.

    Why?

    WHO KNOWS. CHOCOLATE CAKE IS LIFE THOUGH.

    “But they’re called Jaffa **Cakes** so what’s the problem?” I further hear you cry!

    Well, the taxman in the early 90s, named at the time Her Majesty’s Customs & Excise, took a fancy to Jaffa Cakes because of a caveat “a biscuit is standard-rated if wholly or partly covered in chocolate or some product similar in taste and appearance.”. So you might call it a cake, but is it actually a biscuit? It’s the size of a biscuit. It’s the shape of a biscuit. It’s the thickness of a biscuit. But is it a biscuit?

    They took the manufacturer, McVities, to tribunal over the fact they believed it was a biscuit, and therefore, they have to cough up some tax.

    And what did it come down to?

    Well, essentially what every British person knows and trained in from birth: When biscuits go stale, they go soft and soggy. When a cake does stale, it’s goes hard.

    And Jaffa Cakes?

    They go hard.

    Customs & Excise lost the case, but the UK, being a totally unserious country, lapped up the ridiculousness, and the story has been a GCSE coursework case study in Business Studies ever since.

    So the flag at Glastonbury was just bants.

    Got them on telly didn’t it?

  7. The controversy is that jaffa cakes are actually classified as cakes, but they are sold in the biscuit aisle of every shop and supermarket.
    Hence why many people still say that jaffa cakes are biscuits, even though technically they are cakes.
    Someone else in this thread has already explained how and why they are cakes. Regardless of the VAT argument.
    You’ll read so many comments about the legal case and the VAT argument etc. But most of that is irrelevant when it comes down to ‘why is it controversial’. it’s only controversial to many because like I said, they are sold in the biscuit aisles.

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