Quote:
Originally Posted by murraypaul
I though the most interesting bit was this:
Anyone have more information about this?
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Yes; Council of Europe Directive 2009/47/EC is the one you're after. It amends point 6 of Annex III to Directive 2006/112/EC.
2006/112/EC specifies a minimum EU-wide VAT rate (15%) for most things, but allows countries to have up to two reduced rates. Annex III lists items to which those reduced rates can be applied.
In the UK, our reduced rate is 5% (used for things like heating fuel, for instance).
2009/47/EC is "a directive allowing – on a permanent basis – the optional use of reduced rates of value-added tax" for certain things.
One of the items that is included in that category is "books, on all physical means of support." And subsequent clarification has made it clear that that does include eBooks (though that seems somewhat counterintuitive to me; apparently they have a computer or eReader to support them).
So, this would allow the UK government to reduce VAT on eBooks and audiobooks to 5%, if they wished. But it's not compulsory.
(You can't zero rate anything; as far as I understand it, things that were zero rated can remain so, but to add other things, you would need community wide agreement.)
If you enjoy reading through EU documents (actually, it can be much more enlightening than reading what the British papers claim they say), then a good place to start with regard to this is
here