Romania will become the EU state with the highest VAT level for books. The country so far in the first place wants to remove the tax completely
Bookstore – Photo: Pindiyath100 | Dreamstime.com
To encourage reading, the Danish government wants to eliminate value added tax (VAT) to books, which is currently fixed at 25%, Jakob Engel-Schmidt announced on Wednesday, AFP reports. If the Copenhagen Government will go to the end with this project, Romania will become the EU country with the highest level of tax in physical format, with 11%.
“The Government will propose in the draft Law of Finance to eliminate the VAT rate in books. We must do everything to solve this reading crisis which, unfortunately, has worsened in recent years,” explained Jakob Engel-Schmidt, specifying that this elimination will cost the state budget about 330 million crowns (44.2 million euros) per year) per year) per year.
According to the last PISA study, about 24% of 15-year-old Danish students do not master the minimum skills to understand and extract information from a simple text, a percentage that has grown by four points in the last ten years.
At the level of Europe, Denmark had the highest VAT rate in books, while many countries have a reduced share in countries. The UK has zero VAT in books.
Danish book publishers have declared themselves in favor of elimination. Combined with “an increase in public books for public and school libraries, the measure could further strengthen the culture of reading and guarantee access to physical books for all Danish, for both children and adults,” the publishers wrote in a report sent to the Minister of Culture at the end of May.
After Romania increased, in August, the VAT level for books from 5% to 11%, our country will thus become the EU state with the highest level of this tax.
In comparison, VAT quotas for books in other EU countries are 4% in Spain, 5.5% in France or 7% in Germany, while countries such as the Czech Republic and Ireland apply zero VAT for books. At the other extreme, the largest VAT for books is applied by Denmark, respectively 25%, in the second place being this month Romania.
The Eurostat data for the year 2022 show that only 30% of Romanians read at least one book in the previous year, compared to the average of 52% of the European Union.
