In a ruling that comes as a major surprise to fans of the almost-ubiquitous footlong sandwich, Irish lawmakers have concurred: Subway bread is not in reality... bread.
Ireland's Supreme Court has decided that bread sold by the privately-held American restaurant franchise has a huge amount of sugar and can't be legally classified as bread.
Ireland's Value-Added Tax Act of 1972 stipulates that tax-exempt bread cannot contain sweetener, fat and so-called bread enhancer that is more than 2 percent of the flour's actual weight.
Sugar in Subway's menu is five times over the limit and thus cannot be legally counted as staple, the ruling stated. Simply put, the court found that Subway's bread could be classified more as a cake than bread.
The decision was brought about after a Subway franchisee in the country tried to assert exemption from the value-added tax, something that does not cover staple items. Irish tax laws apply a legal classification of what constitutes as a "staple" and should no be taxed so the price remains affordable to consumers.
According to the judges, there's no dispute that bread supplied by Subway in its heated sandwiches contains sugar `that is "10 percent of the weight of the flour included in the dough," the Guardian quoted the court as saying in the ruling.
Subway said it was evaluating Ireland's latest tax policy, pointing out that the ruling was hinged on an old-fashioned staple exemption implemented by the government that was revised in 2012.
Subway faced a legal action in 2013 after a post that went viral on social media showed that one of its footlongs was not what it actually advertised. The company then started to measure the length of its popular product, but the suit was eventually junked for being "worthless."
Meanwhile, in a statement sent by a Subway spokesman to the Guardian, it said that "Subway's bread is, of course, bread."
