Pringles Are Not Potato Chips

Pringles, Procter & Gamble Co.'s salty snack stacked in a tube, are not potato chips, a London judge ruled today in a tax dispute.

 Pringles don't fulfill the legal
definition of “potato crisp,'' the British word for “chip,''
allowing them to be sold tax free in the U.K., Justice Nicholas
Warren at the High Court in London ruled.
Under U.K. law, most food is exempt
from Britain's 17.5 percent sales tax. Even so, the national tax
office claimed that Pringles were covered by an exception for
products such as potato chips, sticks or puffs and similar products
made from the potato, or from potato flour, or from potato starch.''
Procter & Gamble's lawyers claimed
at a May hearing that Pringles don't look like a chip, don't feel
like a chip, and don't taste like a chip, according to the judgment.
They also claim the snack isn't made like a chip since it is cooked
from baked dough, not potato slices.
Potato chips give a sharply crunchy
sensation under the tooth and have to be broken down into jagged
pieces when chewed,'' the Cincinnati-based company's lawyers argued.
“It is totally different with a Pringle, indeed a Pringle is
designed to melt down on the tongue.''
Warren agreed. Pringles aren't made
from the potato'' for the purposes of the tax office's exemption, he
said. He didn't say what Pringles are, other than that they're
tax-exempt.
The U.K. tax office said in an e-mailed
statement that it would consider the judgment “with a view to
deciding whether to appeal.''
In a similar case in April the U.K.
government was told by Europe's highest court, the European Court of
Justice, to entirely refund Marks & Spencer Group Plc more than
20 years-of sales duty charged on chocolate-covered tea cakes.
Between 1971 and 1994 the tax office
incorrectly classified them as biscuits, which are taxable, rather
than cakes, which aren't.