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Originally Posted by rem736
what tax is this? it doesn't sound like a sales tax, which should be standard across all items sold by retailers.
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In Europe it's the VAT - which is kind of like a sales tax, and kind of not. But the EU Commission or whoever rules on this sort of thing has ruled that e-books are not books, but rather "data files" and thus are subject to the regular (i.e. high) tax rate. As data files, too, e-books are subject to the VAT rate in the country of residence of the customer, not the place of business of the seller.
Many EU countries charge a lower VAT rate on books, magazines and newspapers, based on them being considered "cultural."