[little_wizard123]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/foo...he-nation.html

There are plans to place VAT on 5-a-side football, based on the increasing popularity of the sport.

You may remember the 2012 Budget where Osborne stated there would also be VAT on sports nutrition. I've recently seen petition notices in shops so as far as I'm aware this is still going through, unlike the pasty tax which was reversed...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-17486692

http://www.petitionbuzz.com/petitions/vatonsportsdrinks

It's ridiculous. Like the telegraph article says, the tax generated from this will be about £5m, with obesity costing the NHS around £5bn a year. We should be doing all we can to encourage sports and especially the ones that are seeing huge growth in popularity.

[chrisawhitmore]

(Original post by little_wizard123)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/foo...he-nation.html

There are plans to place VAT on 5-a-side football, based on the increasing popularity of the sport.

You may remember the 2012 Budget where Osborne stated there would also be VAT on sports nutrition. I've recently seen petition notices in shops so as far as I'm aware this is still going through, unlike the pasty tax which was reversed...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-17486692

http://www.petitionbuzz.com/petitions/vatonsportsdrinks

It's ridiculous. Like the telegraph article says, the tax generated from this will be about £5m, with obesity costing the NHS around £5bn a year. We should be doing all we can to encourage sports and especially the ones that are seeing huge growth in popularity.

The sports nutrition VAT is perfectly justifiable, as it is a tax on an unnessecary set of luxury goods. For non-competition level users, most sports nutrition products are useless or worse with a lot of sports drinks being inferior, in terms of health benefits, to tap water. Advertising a sugary energy drink as a sports product is a tax dodge and should be stopped.

[FDR]

Why not tax Golf instead? Unlike most other sports, you don't need to be particularly athletic or skilled to play Golf, you just need to be rich. As the article says, taxing five a side really is an own goal for the government; increasing the cost of participation and therefore discouraging people from playing.

[SirMasterKey]

Ridiculous really, we should all be healthier and do more exercise so lets start adding a tax onto one version of the most popular sports to play.

[iSMark]

Ridiculous news! I consider 5 -a side a bit pricey at the moment, works out about £5 a time. I enjoy it massively, but making it more expensive is just out of order. The benefits from taking kids off the street and health benefits are much greater than the tax raised.

[goape]

I'm undecided on this policy, but they should've kept the pasty tax

[onda]

yet again the conservative are making fools of themself who the hell thought of this? every week the conservative comes up with stupid ideas that are not even worth debating.

[Dirac Delta Function]

Are they really this stupid?

[OMGWTFBBQ]

Explain to me why a luxury product should be exempt from tax?

I'm not understanding the problem with the proposition...

[callum9999]

Although people will claim otherwise, I don't think increasing the cost of 5-a-side by 20% is going to result in a massive obesity rise. Most people will carry on playing - those who won't will likely do something else (what's wrong with playing in the park with friends for the grand total of £0 each?). Worst case scenario, they lose out on some exercise - that in itself will make virtually no difference to their weight (what they are eating is far more important - assuming they don't spend 24/7 sitting/lying down somewhere).

I'm not saying this is a good idea - far from it - but it's certainly not disastrous. Nor do I think many people will actually care, people generally only moaned about the "pasty tax" because it affected them personally.

[yunghamz]

Lol who pays to play football anyways when we have parks. 'But what if it rains', then play another day. Far from a good idea or a bad one but if you don't want to pay the 20% extra there's an alternative easily available.

[little_wizard123]

(Original post by yunghamz)
Lol who pays to play football anyways when we have parks. 'But what if it rains', then play another day. Far from a good idea or a bad one but if you don't want to pay the 20% extra there's an alternative easily available.

A bit unreliable trying to play football in this weather on grass- this is probably why 5-a-side is so popular. Plus of course the quality of games is much higher on 5-a-side pitches, and you get organised, competitive games on a smaller scale to 11-a-side which is going to be very difficult to sort out yourself.

Why was the pasty tax abolished? The tax on 5-a-side is only a small thing imo compared with companies like McDonalds and Coca Cola sponsoring the Olympics. I know this isn't the UK's fault, but it's another thing that is just discouraging health, and it just seems it's all about raising money. But then I suppose it's argued that this money is used for the good of sports... whereas ironically this tax money will likely be spent on the £5bn cost of obesity.

I also remember Cadbury's giving away sports equipment if enough vouchers from buying chocolate was collected I'm generally a believer that people are responsible for their own health, but the government and companies do seem to like to make this as difficult as possible.