EU members permitted to change e-publication Vat to lower print rate
EU Finance Ministers are to amend the existing EU Vat directive to allow Member States to apply lower Vat rates to e-publications, including electronic newspapers.
Currently, in Ireland a Vat rate of 9% is applied to printed content, while the same content in digital format is taxed at the standard Vat rate of 23%.
This long-awaited step now allows the Finance Minister to introduce the same Vat rate for online content as printed content.
NewsBrands Ireland has welcomed the decision.
"NewsBrands Ireland has been advocating for the alignment of Vat on printed newspapers and digital subscriptions for many years," said chairman of NewsBrands Ireland, Vincent Crowley.
"We welcome today’s decision from the ECOFIN committee which finally recognises that readers should not be penalised with higher Vat rates for accessing digital content.
We urge the government to implement this change and we reiterate our request for a reduction on Vat to 5% to be applied to both print and digital newspapers in next week’s Budget.
