It depends on whether you re-heat it when you get home, apparently. Or whether it is sold in a bag labelled hot food. The supermarket chain Morrisons has lost a fiendishly complex court battle over whether its rotisserie chickens should be subject to VAT or not. It will have to stump up an extra £17 million to the Treasury. But hold on. This is crazy. The last thing the UK needs right now is what amounts to a stealth tax on spit-roasted poultry.

This is crazy. The last thing the UK needs right now is what amounts to a stealth tax on spit-roasted poultry

The tax lawyers will no doubt study the small print of the judgment for months. The ‘chicken case’ revolved around whether a ‘rotisserie chicken’ was a hot food, and so subject to VAT, or whether it was food that you eat at home, and so exempt from the 20 per cent levy.

Apparently, a lot depends on whether the product is sold above ‘ambient’ temperature, and whether it is sold on a hot rack or on general display. It is a complex issue, with the barristers on both sides probably racking up hundreds of thousands of pounds making the arguments on both sides. Although, as the court noted, selling the chickens in bags labelled ‘Caution: Hot Food’ may have proved an expensive mistake by Morrisons, even if it was just doing its best to stop people burning their fingers.

There is, however, a bigger issue here than whether a few rotisserie birds are hot or cold. Why are we imposing what is, in effect, a stealth tax on chicken? Sure, we all understand that the Treasury is desperate for money, and the extra £17 million a year it hopes to collect from those of us who pick up a pre-cooked meal on the way home from work will come in handy. It might even cover welfare spending for several whole minutes.

The catch is, it is hardly worth it. A rotisserie chicken is a relatively healthy food, there is a cost of living crisis, living standards are already stagnant, and inflation is already dangerously above target. At the same time, the supermarket chains are already suffering from higher National Insurance charges, big increases in the living wage, and, from next year, higher business rates as well. A few Treasury officials may think they are being clever by pushing the boundaries of what they can impose VAT on, and might even be celebrating today’s small victory. But they would surely be better off trying to control state spending that has run out of control. Yet another stealth tax is not going to help anyone – and it would have been far more sensible to leave Morrisons’ chickens in peace.