As you all know, when I’m not eating, sleeping or chasing rabbits, my main occupation is searching out tax and preferably canine-related tax stories for my loyal readership.

Scooby-Doo is a dog that’s almost as famous as me and I my attention was drawn to a picture of his ugly mug in Accountancy Age this week.

Personally, I have always been very protective of my image rights, but I see that he has ‘sold out’ and put his name and picture to a Super Cook Choco lolly kit.

These are made by the Dr Oetker company, also responsible for Oentken Biopot yoghurts (keeps you regular, if you know what I mean) and frozen pizzas (probably doesn’t). Anyway, the old ‘Scoobs’ seems to have got himself caught up in a tax dispute.

Dr Oetker considered that its lolly kits were zero-rated for VAT. Surprise, surprise, HMRC thought that standard-rated VAT should apply and issued assessments for £100,000 tax and interest.

The court has held that the kits put the customer in a position to make food (chocolate-flavoured, rather than chocolate) that would be zero rated if they bought it already manufactured and – like batter mixes, etc. – the lolly kit should also be zero rated.

Apparently, Dr Oetker no longer makes the lolly kits so Scoobs is probably now on his uppers and sniffing out other money-making opportunities.

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