Pringles legally argued in a British court that their product was not actually a potato chip in order to avoid paying millions in luxury snack taxes.

A closer look

Pringles legally argued in a British court that their product was not actually a potato chip in order to avoid paying millions in luxury snack taxes. The corporate lawyers successfully claimed that because the crisp was only 42 percent potato and was artificially molded into a perfect hyperbolic paraboloid, it belonged in the category of savory snacks rather than taxable potato crisps. They won the initial case and avoided the steep Value Added Tax, until an appeals court entirely reversed the decision and forced them to pay back taxes. It beautifully highlights the sheer absurdity of corporate tax evasion, where multinational food conglomerates will publicly admit their food is mostly synthetic garbage just to protect their quarterly profit margins