From The Digital Reader:
European countries must levy standard rates of sales taxes on digital books and newspapers rather than the reduced levels possible for their printed equivalents due to e-commerce rules, the EU’s top court ruled on Tuesday.
The European Court of Justice was called to interpret EU rules on value-added tax (VAT) after Poland’s commissioner for civic rights questioned whether the system of allowing lower rates only for printed publications was fair.
The court said the rules allowed EU countries to apply reduced VAT rates to printed but not digital publications even though both met the European Parliament’s objective when passing the VAT directive – the promotion of reading.
Link to the rest at The Digital Reader
The ruling is in accordance with >present< rules. The ruling will have little/no effect.
The EU have a vote on changing the rules coming up this month (mentioned in the last paragraph of the article). It's supposed to be a slam dunk for doing away with the 'ebook are a service, not a book VAT'-nonsense.
This court case was one of the reasons the rules got a necessary overhaul.
Most EU nations already have national level legislation to change/lower ebook VAT prepared. Some as early as April 2017.
Apart from the UK, the EU is a print book bedrock, in part because ebooks have been prohibitively expensive thanks to the high VAT. That is about to change.
Fasten your seatbelts. Europe is about to go digital.
The issue is quite simple.
Services are tax-liable and ebooks as provided by the major retailers are services, licenced to us, not sold to us as products.
That’s simple, all right, but it isn’t the issue.
As for the bigger issue, this is only the latest round in an ongoing dispute about this. It’s been going on for years, since back when the EU originally (and erroneously) classified ebooks as a service rather than a product.
The publishing industry has significant political capital in Europe – unlike the US – but they have chosen to waste that on issues like copyright reform and piracy and pointless fights against Amazon instead of something future-first and reader-positive (and actually achievable) like this. Fancy that.
They’ve also spent a lot of power and bought politicians fighting Google and linking.
If e-books are indeed products and not services, it implies that buying an e-book is akin to buying a physical object, it becomes property.
So if e-books are property, why are their rules about what I can and can’t do with my property such as sharing it with whoever I wish, after all, this is not a Communist country yet.
Without delving into dirty nasty politics, I wanted to point out that there aren’t any English speaking nations in the EU anymore. So the impact on most of us should be minimal.
Or am I missing something?
Ahem. Ireland.
Thank you for your reminder, David.
There are also fairly decent sales of English books throughout Europe. A lot are to countries where fans don’t want to wait for a local translation(or the country is too small to produce a translated edition.) And a lot are to countries like Spain, where you have a fairly large, English-speaking expat populations.
I thought Ireland was still in the EU. FWIW the Netherlands and Germany have large ESL populations. And for some inexplicable reason I have sales in France although I do not market a French translation (and I do not admit that I speak French).
Of course, there’s always the Grand Duchy of Fenwick. Meet you at the Gray Goose Pub for a bottle of Pinot Gran Fenwick.
Don’t forget Genovia.
They have a cute Princess.
UK hasn’t actually left yet. And certain quarters are trying everything they can to stop the democratically mandated withdrawal from happening.
And there’s always the possibility that the EU implodes before the Brexit process is complete, however unlikely.
I’m from Austria, and last time I looked, I not only buy English language ebooks, I write them as well. There is a market, and it’s growing.
It’s not over. The origin of the case was the question if the different tax for print and ebooks was fair. The court ruling is that ecommerce rules require it. So a set of rules contradicts a general policy statement. Now the EU has to decide what if anything to do about the disconnect. It’s time for the legislators.
Might be a race against time.
The EU might have bigger, existential issues, before they get to it. They have elections coming up…
Another exhibit why people voted for Brexit.
Boo hiss!