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'Reading crisis' prompts Denmark to end 25% tax on books

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Re: 'Reading crisis' prompts Denmark to end 25% tax on books

#31

Post by Ekaros »

bruce511 wrote: post #18
pmontra wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Considering that's 25 year old code I'd expect at least a #define VAT 0.25 and not hardcoded values all around the source code. However I don't expect a table (db table, array, etc) of product categories with their own VAT code or a user defined exception list. That extra code would inevitably add bugs that are not worth the trouble. Adding an exception for books probably requires an update of the apps.

VAT is not a compile-time value. It's a runtime value. Nevermind not scattering it in your code, it shouldn't be in your code at all.

VAT rate can and does change. As such it can be different on different dates. And this change might not even correspond to change of year. So it really has no place in code.

Re: 'Reading crisis' prompts Denmark to end 25% tax on books

#32

Post by incangold »

kasperni wrote: post #19
Svip wrote: post #2

The way this article is worded makes it sound like Denmark has a 'book tax'. Denmark has a VAT on goods (and services), which is 25%. But Denmark doesn't have split VAT values, so it's either 25% or nothing; no in-between. So they are just proposing removing the VAT from books. (Some goods and services are already exempt from VAT.) And if you wonder why Denmark doesn't simply lower their VAT or introduce a split VAT…

> the answer is technical inertia (or technical debt, if you will) One of the issues. There are number of others. For example, VAT is a value-based tax. A VAT cut gives the biggest savings to people who spend the most. Since wealthier people typically spend more, they would save more money in absolute terms. For example, a family with a food budget of 3,000 kr. would save 300 kr., while a family with a food budget of…

VAT can be considered a regressive tax because the poorer I am, the more of my money I spend on goods and services, and the less on savings and investments. As a proportion of income, poor people spend more on VAT than rich people. I think it’s about double, in the UK. So you’re right that cutting VAT helps richer people more in absolute terms. But in terms of of quality of life it helps poorer people more.

[edit] assuming we’re talking about VAT on things that everyone buys. Which is why tax codes often exempt essential items from VAT.

Re: 'Reading crisis' prompts Denmark to end 25% tax on books

#33

Post by Ekaros »

kqr wrote: post #30
uoaei wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the primary reason for hard-coding these kinds of things? Gotta imagine CScientists would have debated this during the design phase. I have some hypotheses, are any of these right? * correctness/verifiability analyses * security? in compiled tools (prevent malicious re-configuration) * an assumption of the inertia of law * general incompetence/naivete ???

Imagine the complexity of correctly accounting for a VAT when rates vary dependin on product type -- and doing it across an entire national economy! I'm glad they don't support that for as long as they don't have to. Is it doable? Sure. Does it need resources that could be more fruitfully applied elsewhere? Probably.

Funnily enough only EU country with no reduced rates on some products is Denmark. So pretty much any system used in other countries already takes this in account.

Re: 'Reading crisis' prompts Denmark to end 25% tax on books

#34

Post by Rnonymous »

kasperni wrote: post #19
Svip wrote: post #2

The way this article is worded makes it sound like Denmark has a 'book tax'. Denmark has a VAT on goods (and services), which is 25%. But Denmark doesn't have split VAT values, so it's either 25% or nothing; no in-between. So they are just proposing removing the VAT from books. (Some goods and services are already exempt from VAT.) And if you wonder why Denmark doesn't simply lower their VAT or introduce a split VAT…

> the answer is technical inertia (or technical debt, if you will) One of the issues. There are number of others. For example, VAT is a value-based tax. A VAT cut gives the biggest savings to people who spend the most. Since wealthier people typically spend more, they would save more money in absolute terms. For example, a family with a food budget of 3,000 kr. would save 300 kr., while a family with a food budget of…

I was under the impression that VAT taxes are considered to impact mostly the poor. While in absolute terms the rich are impacted most, in percentage terms VAT is considered a much smaller portion of expenses for the rich than the poor. I quote: "VAT is a regressive tax, putting more burden to the poor than to the rich. Indeed, VAT applies the same rate to everyone regardless of their level of wealth – but the richer you are, the lower the proportion of your revenue goes to consumption."

Re: 'Reading crisis' prompts Denmark to end 25% tax on books

#35

Post by jillesvangurp »

Germany uses 7% VAT on books and a few other things (taxi rides, food). 19% is the regular VAT tariff. But going out for food and drinks is still reasonably affordable here compared to other EU countries (and never mind the UK and US where this is super expensive). I buy a lot of ebooks as well.

I'm definitely a bit price sensitive. For me the sweet spot is around 10 euros. Anything above is kind of a big expense and I'll think twice. But a book priced around 7 euros I'll just buy it even if I'm not 100% sure if I'll like it. I might be reading a lot less if those prices were creeping up. So, I can see how this might help more Danes get more into reading.

Reading books is something that high school erodes as a pleasurable activity (by making you read the wrong stuff). I got back into reading after high school when I was again able to read what I wanted and when I wanted again but not everybody does that. I was actually reading a lot before going to high school.

I expect that the Danish educational system might be hammering the fun out of reading in a similar way. Getting kids to read is easier if you give them the right books. If you've ever seen a small kid completely absorbed in a book you know what I'm talking about. I was like that. Force feeding kids dreary literary works is not necessarily the best way to get people into reading. The main learning that re-enforces in kids is that apparently they don't like reading. It's counter productive.

And of course the elephant in the room here is that Denmark is not a big country and that there are probably only so many Danish authors actually worth reading. A good benchmark would be counting the ones that get translated and have an international audience. The same is true in the Netherlands. Only a handful of authors that publishers consider worth translating. And of course the education system puts a lot of emphasis on a handful of native authors that the rest of the world would never have heard about.

Re: 'Reading crisis' prompts Denmark to end 25% tax on books

#36

Post by phito »

samdoesnothing wrote: post #14

I cannot believe there are people who expect the government to solve every problem when they can't even stop themselves from causing problems left right and centre. Even a child would make the correct inference that taxing books at 25% would not have a positive impact on reading rates. Boggles the mind really.

They tax everything at 25%. They just added an exception for books.

Re: 'Reading crisis' prompts Denmark to end 25% tax on books

#37

Post by yorwba »

quanto wrote: post #26

> The latest education report from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) raised alarm in Denmark when it found 24% of Danish 15-year-olds cannot understand a simple text, up four percentage points in a decade. So, in 2015, 20% of 15-yo could not understand a simple text. Isn't that unbelievably high?

In 2015 (or some other year), they calculated the bottom quintile (or maybe quartile) score of students on some reading assessment, declared this to be the lowest level of reading competency, and wrote a helpful explanation that people who score at the lowest level of reading competency struggle with simple texts. But there's no single simple text that you could point to where people below the threshold completely fail to understand it and people above the threshold easily breeze through.

Because reading competency isn't binary like that. Reading competency is binary in that complete illiterates cannot read at all and people who aren't complete illiterates typically can read quite a lot, but there probably aren't enough actual illiterates in Denmark to produce scary-sounding statistics. So instead you get arbitrary thresholds that don't mean what they claim to mean.

Re: 'Reading crisis' prompts Denmark to end 25% tax on books

#38

Post by StopDisinfo910 »

Svip wrote: post #25
uoaei wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the primary reason for hard-coding these kinds of things? Gotta imagine CScientists would have debated this during the design phase. I have some hypotheses, are any of these right? * correctness/verifiability analyses * security? in compiled tools (prevent malicious re-configuration) * an assumption of the inertia of law * general incompetence/naivete ???

The real problem is actually less the exact rate of 25%, but rather that most of the systems only assume one rate. Denmark was the first country to introduce a general VAT in 1967, and whilst the rate has changed (last in 1992 to 25%), the number of rates have not. So lowering the general VAT rate would likely be possible in a 1-3 year time frame (depending on unknown factors), but lowering the general VAT rate would…

> The real problem is actually less the exact rate of 25%, but rather that most of the systems only assume one rate.

This can’t be the case.

You have to apply the VAT of their own country to customer from other part of the union and some services are exempt.

In all likelihood, most systems in Denmark already supports using different VAT for different products. Plus, most accounting systems won’t be Denmark specific anyway but simply configured for it.

Re: 'Reading crisis' prompts Denmark to end 25% tax on books

#39

Post by Tangokat »

Svip wrote: post #2

The way this article is worded makes it sound like Denmark has a 'book tax'. Denmark has a VAT on goods (and services), which is 25%. But Denmark doesn't have split VAT values, so it's either 25% or nothing; no in-between. So they are just proposing removing the VAT from books. (Some goods and services are already exempt from VAT.) And if you wonder why Denmark doesn't simply lower their VAT or introduce a split VAT…

Worth noting that controlling consumption via extra/less tax on specific products is debated a lot in Denmark. Namely cigarettes have a high added tax (about 2kr/0.3 usd PER cigarette). Increasing the tax and thus the price of cigarettes had a fairly large effect on consumption (0.13-0.82% less cigarettes consumed for every 1% price increase) [1]. Recently it has been debated to remove the VAT from vegetables and fruit to increase consumption of those.

The same logic is used for this book VAT exemption (which is good in my opinion) - I doubt we'll see the same effect though. Young people not reading is a complex problem to solve but books are really expensive to buy, so it's a good place to start.

[1] https://vidensraad.dk/sites/default/files/node/field_report_...

Re: 'Reading crisis' prompts Denmark to end 25% tax on books

#40

Post by Thiez »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #35

Germany uses 7% VAT on books and a few other things (taxi rides, food). 19% is the regular VAT tariff. But going out for food and drinks is still reasonably affordable here compared to other EU countries (and never mind the UK and US where this is super expensive). I buy a lot of ebooks as well. I'm definitely a bit price sensitive. For me the sweet spot is around 10 euros. Anything above is kind of a big expense and…

I fully agree with you that forced "literature" lessons suck the fun out of reading. As someone who had to go through it in the Netherlands I've sworn off Dutch authors in response, and haven't read Dutch literature for over 2 decades.
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