GST on Fruit and Vegetables - Labour's Idiocy

Remember hearing of the story about when VAT was introduced in the UK.  The government of the time was undertaking the sort of populist nonsense that Labour are attempting now and exempted 'basic food'.  Included in the definition of basic food was salt.  Of course the food nazis decided takeaways were nasty and so VAT applied to takeaways. 

It did not take long.  One enterprising fish and chip shop advertised that their fish and chips were free while every order had to have salt and the salt cost 2 pounds per standard order.  They were then effectively cheaper than all their competition by the value of the VAT.  Of course to remedy this legal avoidance required more legislation and expert panels.

The beauty of NZ's GST is its broad application and so the difficulty in finding avoidance tricks such as the UK example.  If Labour's nonsense proposal were to be passed, I could easily imagine there would be examples of the vegetables or fruit being charged for while non-vegetable/fruit elements would be free.  Tax experts love exemptions as they provide a good living in devising schemes to take advantage of them so I can see the tax advisors industry rubbing their hands in glee at the thought.