BrianH wrote in news:d40f0$47dcc922$544bb5cd$13325
@news.hispeed.ch:

Many products are zero-rated, such as food, children's
clothes, books, etc and other products/services have
differing percentage groups.


Thank you for the information. I have an old friend in his 80s from Thun,
Berner Oberland, and he wants to take me with him to visit the few old
friends he has left before it's his turn. With the dollar so weak, I'm not
sure that will ever happen again, but I'd love to go. He says, "These are
not Swiss people. They all speak GERMAN, not Swiss German!" His German is
before television and his Swiss friends who come here to visit him all
comment on his old version of the language.

In South Carolina, the 8.5% sales tax is on EVERYTHING, including
food/clothes/other staples of life. They take it and keep it. We don't
pay sales tax on fuel, though. It's not enough for them. We pay fixed
34.5c/gallon on gasoline and 39.7c/gallon on diesel...but not at the
marinas where red tractor diesel is sold, like the farmers use, without the
"road tax" that's siphoned off to support the vote buying system...rather
than put into road maintenance where it was supposed to go. Our roads are
falling apart because of it.

When Werner came back from Thun last time, a few years ago, I was looking
through the pictures from the streets and told him it looked fake! There
wasn't even a single piece of paper in the gutters. Near the last picture,
I went, "AHA! I see one!". There was a piece of paper in the street
behind the friends he was taking a picture of....but there was a little old
lady poised over it about to pick it up...(c; Thun has got to be one of
the cleanest cities on the planet. The views are simply amazingly
beautiful. I want to go sailing on the Thunersee!

Do they really stop at a stopligiht and shut the engines off where you
live? They do that in Thun, then restart to go. I still think he was
joking.