A not so hot idea from Hacienda
Tax equality, of a sort:
I always thought it was appropriate that prostitutes hung out across from the Secretaria de Hacienda y Credito Publico in Mexico City. You’re gonna get screwed and it’s gonna cost you. Since food is not a taxable item, but services are, some brilliant mind at Hacienda decided sticking a frozen burrito in a microwave at the local convenience store was a “service” and the you should pay the 15% IVA (value added tax) for making it edible.
Alfredo (Citius64) writes (my translation):
So, if you’re poor, now you get to pay the same proportion of IVA (the 15% value added tax) to heat up a cup of instant raman noodles that a rich guy pays to lap up dinner in a high-class restaurant. That’s politics for you: punish the poor man for wanting his raman noodles heated up… right in the middle of one of the worst economic crises we’ve faced, and at the beginning of winter. If that’s not medieval, I don’t know what is.
Hey, Secretary Carstens… did you ever consider taxing meals by the calorie?
The Mex Files 