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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

#51

Post by pingou »

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?

I could imagine a significant portion of the students tested can't be arsed to make the effort of reading carefully, especially since the test result wouldn't even impact them, I'm not sure how they can control for that.

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

#52

Post by rasz »

Variable/exempt VAT on certain goods often leads to funny exploitation. In Poland we got a ton of media (games, movies, pr0n) sold as magazines/books to get 8% instead of 22% VAT.

Here an example from CD Project (Witcher and Cyberpunk guys) https://gamerweb.pl/gry-z-serii-gamebook-w-sieci-sklepow-bie... Gamebook, a book bundled with "free" game :)

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

#54

Post by Grum9 »

phito wrote: post #36
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.

[dead]

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

#55

Post by rsynnott »

mlinhares wrote: post #5
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…

Insane that technical debt and general incompetency in software can produce such unexpected side effects.

During the financial crisis, Ireland added half a percent to VAT. Wanna guess what happened?

(The funny thing is, the _reduced_ rate had been 13.5% for years, but a non-integer rate for the main rate _still_ caused widespread IT problems...)

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

#56

Post by rsynnott »

PeterStuer wrote: post #47

Does this mean EU citizens can order books from DK at 0% VAT? (6% in Belgium)

Books are already zero-rated in Ireland and a few other countries. (For a long time, _e-books_ were subject to full VAT in Ireland even though books were zero-rated, but this eventually got fixed.)

In general, sellers are obligated to use the VAT rate of the buyer's country, though there's a lot of messiness around the edges there.

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

#57

Post by rsynnott »

rasz wrote: post #52

Variable/exempt VAT on certain goods often leads to funny exploitation. In Poland we got a ton of media (games, movies, pr0n) sold as magazines/books to get 8% instead of 22% VAT. Here an example from CD Project (Witcher and Cyberpunk guys) https://gamerweb.pl/gry-z-serii-gamebook-w-sieci-sklepow-bie... Gamebook, a book bundled with "free" game :)

This is supposedly why the Playstation 2 came with a BASIC interpreter in Europe; they were attempting to have it classified as a computer (no import duties) rather than a games console (duties, at the time). I _think_ part of the motivation for Linux on the PS3 may have been something similar.

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

#58

Post by david38 »

incangold wrote: post #32
kasperni wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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] as…

You can do both, in that you can have a system where if you make less than X, you don’t pay VAT on certain things, or less.

California is now doing this for electric car rebates. Only works for items pinned to a person.

This can easily be compensated for by simply giving the poor more rebate on income tax.

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

#59

Post by duxup »

>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

For some reason. I don't think a VAT applied to books has anything to do with this nor will altering it do anything to help.

This is one of those situations where it seems like government reaches for the first tool they think of regardless if it makes any sense.

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

#60

Post by tossandthrow »

z3t4 wrote: post #44
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 cheif/over-engineerer will account for variable tax rates in the future, especially if they plan to sell their erp system in other countries.

Not only that, but this person will account for arbitrary VAT schemes and embed a small, but Turing complete, dsl to calculate the vat rate.
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