Paige says Relax

As they tend to do, the press has picked up on a story about VAT on condoms and has become indignant at the stupidity of taxing a public health initiative. You see the whole thing revolves around considering that for tax purposes, prophylatics are considered as a luxury item and are hence VAT rated at 21%. The argument is lazily put forward that sheaths are not luxury items they are an essential for safe sex.

Perhaps it is old age but I find myself becoming all Alice Glenn with rage. Of course condoms are luxury goods. Every day essentials are sanitary towels, hair-straighteners, fishnet stockings and good put-down lines. Medication for an asthmatic child is clearly a luxury item and so we should tax the hell out of those wheezers. Women who have drunken sex with their repulsive bosses at christmas parties need help not some stealth sheath tax.

But perhaps the thing that worried me most about the whole story was the troublesome observation that the Revenue Commissioners could not say how much tax was being gathered by way of VAT on condom sales. Like the size of the tax take had any relevance to the argument. Can someone not start a campaign to boycott BP or Shell for the environmental impact of selling petroleum refinery byproducts to a dodgy firm to mould into ultra-thin, ribbed for added sensitivity, rubber johnnies?

For the poor bastard who steps out of line in the Revenue commissioners and for their trouble is asked to quantify the tax take on condom VAT, perhaps I could give you a quick ready reckoner.

You multiple the annual sales in condoms by the average price and then calculate VAT @ 21%. In this instance the calculations are not complicated by a withholding tax.

Paige

(And if the damn fine chap from the Dept of Finance who regularly devastates me with his smile on the 8:05 to Blackrock wants, I'm willing to engage in some research in the field on this subject!)