Quote:
Originally Posted by J. Strnad
It's not a memory problem, Harry, it's just simple ignorance. I didn't know that.
But tell me: How often does it go up, and how often does it go down, and what is the general trend?
We have ups and downs in our federal, state and local taxes, too, but the trend is clearly upwards.
Edited to add: Of course, the tax code is so complicated that it's hard to know. Usually somebody gets a break and somebody else has to take up the slack.
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Sorry; I didn't realize that you weren't in the UK yourself
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VAT has been 17.5% in the UK for many, many years. It was temporarily reduced to 15% last year as an economic stimulus, when we were in a recession, but that was only ever a short-term measure. This increase to 20% is part of a package by our new government to get rid of an enormous budget deficit. They aim to "balance the books" within 4 years, by cutting overall government spending by 25%.