Happy Birthday to "possibly the worst tax, ever"?

VAT is 40 years old – and now has middle-age spread

Levy has raised around £1.6tn but has become a headache for business with hopes for a cheap and simple EU tax in the pas

Designed by French tax expert Maurice Lauré in the postwar years and first levied in the UK on April Fools' Day 1973, VAT is now the government's third largest source of revenue after income tax and national insurance.
But what started out as a simple, easy to collect tax – a low, flat rate imposed on most goods and services – has become increasingly complex, with exemptions for everything from children's clothes to Jaffa Cakes.
"The initial idealistic hope that it would be a simple tax, easy to apply, has constantly been eroded because there are always special lobbies," said Deloitte tax expert Daniel Lyons. "Politics and economics got in the way of simplicity."