Fluff Ltd (t/a Mag-it) v Commissioners of Customs and Excise
| Jurisdiction | England & Wales |
| Judgment Date | 11 May 2000 |
| Date | 11 May 2000 |
| Court | Queen's Bench Division (Administrative Court) |
Queen's Bench Division (Crown Office List).
Laddie J.
David Scorey (instructed by Hutchinson Mainprice) for the company.
Alison Foster (instructed by the Solicitor for Customs and Excise) for Customs.
The following cases were referred to in the judgment:
ACT Construction Ltd v C & E Commrs VATWLR(1980) 1 BVC 356(CA); [1981] 1 WLR 49
C & E Commrs v Ali Baba Tex Ltd VAT[1992] BVC 93
Value added tax - Zero-rating - Food - Supply of animal feeding stuffs - Supply of maggots to fishermen - Whether supply zero-rated - Whether supply of maggots was supply of animal feeding stuffs - Value Added Tax Act 1994, Sch. 8, Grp. 1, general item 2.
This was an appeal by the taxpayer company from the decision of the tribunal dismissing its appeal from a decision of Customs that its supply of maggots as live fish bait was not a supply of animal feeding stuffs within Value Added Tax Act 1994 schedule 8 group 1item 2 of Grp. 1 of Sch. 8 to the Value Added Tax Act 1994 (No. 15,856; VAT[1999] BVC 2121).
The taxpayer company supplied live maggots from coin-operated vending machines for use by coarse fishermen. Customs ruled that the taxpayer was not engaged in the supply of "animal feeding stuffs" within the meaning of Value Added Tax Act 1994 schedule 8 group 1item 2 of Grp. 1 of Sch. 8 to the Value Added Tax Act 1994, as the maggots were bait, and therefore were not zero-rated. The taxpayer appealed to a tribunal which dismissed the appeal. The taxpayer appealed to the High Court arguing that maggots could be fed to fish and were so used at fish farms. Therefore they were animal foodstuffs and so remained whether fed to animals or not and whether used as a bait or not.
Held, dismissing the company's appeal:
In the context of the legislation it was wrong to say that any material which was edible and of nutritional value to an animal was an animal foodstuff within general item 2. That was not the natural meaning of those words and in the context of the legislation whether or not an edible substance was animal feeding stuffs was in large part answered by the way in which it was sold or supplied. The maggots were not supplied as a foodstuff for fish, i.e. for the purpose of feeding and growing fish but were sold for use in enticing fish towards hooks. Accordingly, the tribunal had reached the right conclusion. The supply did not come within general item 2 and was not zero-rated.
Laddie J:
1. This is an appeal by Fluff Ltd, trading as Mag-it, against a decision of the London Value Added Tax Tribunal (chairman: JC Gort) released on 11 December 1998 (Decision 15,856). Fluff Ltd engages in the following line of business. It supplies live maggots from coin-operated vending machines for use by fishermen engaged in coarse fishing.
2. The issue before me in the end comes down to a comparatively simple one: whether the sale by Fluff Ltd of those live maggots can properly be categorised as zero-rated as the supply of "animal feeding stuffs", within the meaning of those words in general...
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