Response to the Treasury Select Committee inquiry into VAT

A book is a book however you read it, and people using digital products should not be discriminated against by legislation that has not kept pace with societal change.

The Publishers Association

UK readers and learners have long suffered from an unnecessary complexity in the applied VAT regime, with print publications being zero-rated while ebooks and ejournals are standard rated at the behest of European legislation. We believe this tax on knowledge to be socially and economically counterproductive.

Our response contains answers to the following questions posed by the committee:

• What opportunities and challenges for the UK VAT regime are presented by the UK’s exit from the European Union?
• What aspects of VAT (either process or design) cause the biggest problems for businesses? How might they be improved?
• How does VAT measure up against the principle that tax policy should be fair?
• How does VAT measure up against the principle that tax policy should support growth and encourage competition
• How does VAT measure up against the principle that tax policy should be coherent, with new provisions complementing the existing system rather than conflicting with it?