Torq Limited v Her Majesty's Revenue & Customs

Facts

Torq Limited, whose business is the sale of sports nutrition bars, appealed against a decision of the Commissioners of Customs and Excise that supplies of its product, the "Torq Bar", were standard-rated for VAT. The Appellant contended that the bars should be zero-rated as food under section 30 of the Value Added Tax Act 1994 and Group 1 of Schedule 8 to the Value Added Tax Act 1994. Matthew Hart, the Appellant's managing director and a sports science graduate, had developed the bar over some two years with a food manufacturing company, FM Foods Ltd, seeking a moist, chewy energy bar with layered carbohydrate release and a very low fat content, using maltodextrin as a fat substitute. The bar contained oats, raisins, maltodextrin, fructose syrup, apricot or banana, puffed rice, water, D-Ribose and a vitamin and mineral mix, and was sold mainly through cycling shops, the Torq website and cycling events. The Appellant conceded that the bar was an item of sweetened prepared food normally eaten with the fingers, and so confectionery within Note 5 to Group 1, but argued that it was a "cake" and so fell outside excepted item 2, principally because it was a low-fat flapjack and the Commissioners accepted that flapjacks are cake.