[GERGE]

I also feel that I should add this to the main topic; there is a proper reason why ebooks are taxed more in some countries, article in The NY Times isn't really does a good job of explaining.

I will try to explain by taking UK as an example (I could use my own country but I am sure more poeple speak English than Turkish here and therefore could go to the sources =) ).

Now, for UK, the standard VAT rate is %20. Article says that UK has %0 VAT for printed books, %20 for e-books. That %20 is the standard VAT. And this is a classification problem.

What you need to know here is that tax laws are very detailed and precise. This is by necessity but I am not going to go into details here. It includes books as zero VAT rate but the books are classified under printed products. And e-books are not printed. This is the problem. It should be the same everywhere on that list.

This is why e-books have more tax. In Turkey, finance ministry decided to classify e-books as books in 2013 with a new code, therefore we pay the same %8 VAT for both. Google Play Books, for example, takes %8 VAT from everybook they sell to me.

Some of the problem arises from the nature of tax regulations. Tax can usually be only decided by law, not by statutes or bylaws or anything lower like that. Law, like criminal code, civil code... They are hard to made, they are slow.

What is needed is to classify e-books as books by law, not by common sense. Common sense don't really have a place in tax law and that is actually usually good for the public benefit. But those are unnecessary discussions here, never discuss public benefit with a lawyer anyway =)

PS. Geographic restrictions on books actually don't have any basis on any law I know of. They are mostly contract based restrictions created by taxation problems.