More on VAT

In the end the government taxes added value. In other words, in the EU the restaurant owner pays the difference between the tax he collected on meals and the tax he paid on food supplies.

The customer at the restaurant being the end user, he pays tax on the entire purchase price, because it represents the sum of all the value added by every player in the supply chain.

The problem is in fact with the naming "sales tax", which is in fact a value added tax. The difference is in method, in the US and Canada the restaurant owner buys his food at zero tax, and pays the tax on the entire purchase. The net result is the same, except that over here every player in the supply chain has to work out differences between value in and value out. In North America only one player has to pay.

In both cases, EU or N. America, the end user pays the entire VAT or sales tax, which are for all purposes the same thing. Only in the EU, you need 10 times more civil servants to process all the unnecessary extra steps...

That's essentially true for restaurant food in Canada but for everything else, including booze, we have the Goods & Services Tax which is the same as VAT. I have just finished my quarterly returns so am well aware of this:-( Graham

Oh....