You are viewing your 1 free article this month. Login to read more articles.
The cut in VAT on unenriched ebooks from 19.6% to 5.5% in France will almost certainly be postponed for a year from 1st January 2011 to 2012. An all party committee of members of parliament from both houses agreed during a meeting on Monday to iron out differences over the 2011 budget that the rate would be lowered, but not immedately. The National Assembly and Senate will both vote on the agreement today (15th).
The pact came just hours after the French Publishers Association, Syndicat National de l’Edition (SNE), had released a statement welcoming the VAT reduction next year to avoid distortions of competition and to widen the choice of titles for legal download.
Reports suggest that the dire state of French public finances are the reason for delaying the cut. The move is expected to curb the growth of the ebook market, and although unenriched ebooks will still be around in a year’s time, other forms are expected to have developed.
Meanwhile, French president Nicolas Sarkozy yesterday commissioned former culture minister Jacques Toubon to lobby France’s 26 European Union partners, the European Commission and Parliament to introduce a reduced VAT rate for all electronic cultural goods and services sold across the EU.
Community law permits a lower rate for some categories, but not others, Sarkozy noted. This hampers a new source of growth, jobs and innovation, while bolstering non-European companies based in countries with different tax regimes that "amortize their costs on a globalized market".