Budget 2020: Abolition of digital 'reading tax' hailed

The chancellor delivered an early Christmas present for bookworms as he announced the abolition of the so-called “reading tax”.

VAT on digital publications, including books, will be scrapped from 1 December. Picture: Getty Images/iStockphoto.

Rishi Sunak said VAT on digital publications, including books, newspapers, magazines and academic journals, will be scrapped from 1 December.

Announcing the news, which was met with cheers, he said: “A world-class education will help the next generation thrive and nothing could be more fundamental to that than reading. And yet digital publications are subject to VAT. That can’t be right.

“There will be no VAT on historical fiction by Hilary Mantel, manuals or textbooks like Gray’s Anatomy, or indeed works of fantasy like John McDonnell’s Economics For The Many”.

Books and newspapers have been exempt from VAT since the introduction of the tax in 1973. In 2018, the European Union allowed its member states to remove or to apply lower VAT to electronic publications – but the UK did not follow suit.

In February, TV star and writer Stephen Fry, former Blue Peter presenter Konnie Huq, Fifty Shades Of Grey author EL James and leading crime writer Val McDermid backed a campaign calling for it to be removed.

They were joined by nearly 700 leading writers in sending a letter to then-chancellor Sajid Javid, claiming the 20 per cent rate could stop “young readers, those from low-income backgrounds, and those who struggle to read print from experiencing the joys of reading”. The letter also stated: “It is vital that everybody can access the joy and opportunity of reading, regardless of their age, income or physical capability.”

The Publishers Association, whose Axe The Reading Tax campaign called for the removal of the “illogical and unfair” levy, said it was “thrilled” with the decision.