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But...but...a biscuit of any kind is value added to flour and water, isn't it?
Under Mr Ploppy's reasoning, a DRMed ebook would be VAT-free but a DRM-free book would be taxed.
My head hurts.
Basically, the government is looking for a way to raise revenue, so it does what governments do best, it taxes something, makes up a rationale for taxing that particular thing, and if the public doesn't rebel, the tax goes through. It starts low and gets higher (funny how rarely it goes the other way).
Now we are in the weird world of political logic, where you have to interpret the world in terms of the tax structure you've created.
Which is how sensible people end up discussing when "value" has been "added" to a product. Doesn't it add value to an egg to get it out from under a chicken, wash it off, and put it in a protective container? Does it really add value to a product to process the vitamins and nutrients out of it, pump it full of additives and corn syrup, and coat it with chocolate?
Somehow books got exempted. The government has no financial interest in exempting more book-like products, so ebooks get taxed. Books get exempted because of "educational value," but where exactly is the educational value in...well, I don't want to insult anyone's reading choices, but you can fill in the blank. Meanwhile, a truly educational ebook gets taxed because it's not a book, really, until the people rebel and insist on calling it a book.
It's nonsense, but that doesn't matter. It's the government figuring out how to raise revenue...end of story. If they decided to tax purple things, we'd have people arguing about whether something was bluish/reddish and nontaxable or truly purple and taxable. And eggplant farmers would lobby for an exemption.
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