To Avoid 21% Sales Tax Theater Sells $16 Carrots--Gives Away Tickets

In what can be considered the most original method of avoiding (or evading) a draconian 21% sales tax, a Spanish theater has actually resorted to "selling" carrots for $16 a piece, and then giving away a theater ticket for free.

When the Spanish government hiked sales tax on theater tickets this past summer, Quim Marcé thought his theater was doomed. With one in four local residents unemployed, Marcé knew that even a modest hike in ticket prices might leave the 300-seat Bescanó municipal theater empty.
"We said, 'This is the end of our theater, and many others.' But then the next morning, I thought, we've got to do something, so that we don't pay this 21 percent, and we pay something more fair," says Marcé in Spanish.
He looked out his window at farmland that surrounds this village, two hours north of Barcelona, and suddenly had an idea: Instead of selling tickets to his shows, he'd sell carrots.
"We sell one carrot, which costs 13 euros [$16] -– very expensive for a carrot. But then we give away admission to our shows for free," he explains in Spanish. "So we end up paying 4 percent tax on the carrot, rather than 21 percent, which is the government's new tax rate for theater tickets."
Classified as a staple, carrots are taxed at a much lower rate and were spared new tax hikes that went into effect here on September 1.