Making a Cake of It

Ever heard of a single item of food inspiring a whole new legislation??? Wonders will never cease, reality is stranger than fiction and all that... presenting one among the many outlandish things that Britian is home to.

Turns out, McVities, foremost among the makers of Jaffa Cakes, wanted to escape paying VAT for their precious produce. Now, the law in the UK says that cakes and biscuits do not get charged VAT, but chocolate-covered biscuits incur VAT. So, the good folks at HM Customs and Excise stormed to court demanding that VAT be paid on Jaffa Cakes since they're chocolate-covered, orange-jam-centered, sponge-based gooey goodies very much the shape and size of biscuits.

Not really wanting to shell out a few extra million when they could well avoid it, McVities rolled up their baker's sleeves and set to work showing the Customs and Excise guys who was the boss of the bakery here.

Among other things, they managed to bake a giant jaffa cake and presented it, saying how the others were simply mini versions of the same. Also using their higher powers of scientific reasoning, they proved that it was indeed cakes they were talking about and not biscuits, because, cakes go hard when stale, like Jaffa cakes do and not soft like biscuits do. And what do you know???!! Viola!! McVities neatly pulled in their millions back from under the noses of the Customs and Excise. *

And they all lived happily ever after because there were more than enough Jaffa Cakes for everyone, including the Customs and Excise people.

Honest to god, have you ever heard anything equal to this???

* Thanks to the Boss for narrating this tid-bit and to Wikipedia for sorting the facts out.