Vexing VAT on Ebooks in Europe

If you don’t like the thought of paying VAT on your ebook then sign this petition. if you’re either UK resident or a UK citizen living elsewhere. Dead tree books don’t have VAT charged on them, so it seems extremely unfair and inconsistent that electronic ones do. Apparently they’re a luxury, whereas paper books aren’t. Now the EU is OK about member states charging a reduced VAT rate on “any similar physical medium that predominantly reproduce the same textual information content as printed books”, and has been since January 2011. Spain has taken advantage of this to reduce its VAT on ebooks to 4%. Elsewhere though, a different story. In Italy VAT is 4% on paper books and 20% on ebooks, and in Germany the figures are 7% and 19% respectively. France shoves 19.6% TVA (= VAT) on livres electroniques. There’s a petition here to sign too to try and get this put to rights, so if you’re a resident in France, then please do sign this one too.

However, the economic climate in Europe isn’t one that’s likely to  make governments look favourably at reducing their tax income in any shape or form at the moment. But, we can at least try.