Books should be Untaxable!

[ThePage]

I have a membership in the Whitehouse2 forum at http://whitehouse2.org/ to which I have posted a priority stating that Books should be untaxable. I request that any who are interested also join it, and endorse this priority as well as any others of interest to them.

I had read the Fairtax Book and joined the Whitehouse2 forum as a suggested move in support of the Fairtax in an Email from the Fairtax.org website. I highly recommend reading the book and/or it's sequel. Fictionwise has both, and they may also be obtained at the public library.

[lilac_jive]

You must be talking about pbooks, because there's no tax on ebooks (since it's the internet).

Edit* oh and magazines are non-taxable. Just thought I'd toss that out there.

[ThePage]

Not just now, but they keep talking about taxing all internet sales.

My priority statement is on adding books to the magazine and newspaper category which I understand was made untaxable since they were educational.

[Sweetpea]

We have two levels of VAT. The high level (which is at 19%, but there are plans to raise it to 20%) and the low level (which is at 6%).

The low level is for products that are required for a decent living, like water, gas, electricity, but also food and books. The high level is for everything else (luxury articles). When they mentioned they wanted to put books into the high level group, there was a lot of outcry... Not sure when they're going to mention it again.

(Books = books, daily newspapers, weekly magazines, magazines and other periodicals that are published at least 3 times a year.)

[RWood]

No tax on books? What is a book?

Today I buy a CD with a Little Funny Book (LFB) inside the cover that lists the songs and other stuff about the recording. In the future I wind up buying the LFB and they give me the CD as a bonus. Recently we got a box of breakfast flakes that had a "Little Golden Book" for children inside as a give-a-way. In the future I could buy the book and get the flakes for free. Did I buy the shoes or the book about how the shoe was made?

[LazyScot]

In the UK, pbooks are 0 VAT rated, i.e. no VAT or tax is charged on them. I'm pretty certain the same applies to magazines and newspapers. (The UK low rate VAT is 0; the high rate is 15%, so I guess you could technically say that VAT is charged on books......)

However, I think ebooks count as software and have 15% VAT charged on them, possibly courtesy of European rules. (I'm sure there's been a discussion on this somewhere else on MR...)

I quite like the idea of making DRMd books taxable, unDRMd books untaxed, though how you would ever get that past legislators, I have no idea.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by lilac_jive

You must be talking about pbooks, because there's no tax on ebooks (since it's the internet).

Edit* oh and magazines are non-taxable. Just thought I'd toss that out there.

Depends where you live. In the EU, pBooks generally attract a low (or zero, in some countries) rate of VAT, but under the EU's "Electronic Commerce Directive", "digital information", such as eBooks, has by law to be subject to the full rate of VAT in whatever country the seller is in.

[GeoffC]

One reason for using Fictionwise....