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 system like in most other countries; the answer is technical inertia (or technical debt, if you will). Most Danish accounting and banking systems are hardcoded to assume 25% (or nothing). So if a politician want immediate change to VAT, removing it from a category of goods/services is their only option.
Edit: I realise I was careless in my wording, when I wrote "hardcoded to assume 25% (or nothing)"; I meant that the systems only assume one rate (or nothing), not that the value of 25% was hardcoded (though it is in a few (lesser) systems I've encountered). I apologise for the confusion.
What is people doing instead of reading? Social media is designed to be extremely addictive. It taps also on teenagers fears of failing to fit in.
I love HN for being a place for discussion. But most social media is a one way trend setting communication. Miss it and you are out of touch with everybody else. And it moves fast.
What people need is time for themselves with their own thoughts. That creates the opportunity to read and do other things. A phone that requires 100% of your attention span does not allow for that. And big tech puts billions on tracking and data gathering to better know what keeps people hooked and dependent.
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.
Seriously though, I think the problem is not so much the particular tax on books (though this measure would help) but the way those taxes are computed.
This is just a dumb idea, but if a company or a person has X amount of money to put into a product that then can be sold in essentially free-to-produce copies at a Y price, and then a consumer spends an amount of time Z consuming it, then there should be a tax computed on those three variables X, Y, Z. The idea being that huge actors with high X can end up having a lot of Z. And Z is citizen time, which is dangerous to let it be captured by the interests of big capital in detriment to the interests of lesser capital and other people. But I guess that sounds too socialist :-( .
> 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?
Germany uses 7% VAT on books and a few other things (taxi rides, food). 19% is the regular VAT tariff. But going out for food and drinks is still reasonably affordable here compared to other EU countries (and never mind the UK and US where this is super expensive). I buy a lot of ebooks as well.
I'm definitely a bit price sensitive. For me the sweet spot is around 10 euros. Anything above is kind of a big expense and I'll think twice. But a book priced around 7 euros I'll just buy it even if I'm not 100% sure if I'll like it. I might be reading a lot less if those prices were creeping up. So, I can see how this might help more Danes get more into reading.
Reading books is something that high school erodes as a pleasurable activity (by making you read the wrong stuff). I got back into reading after high school when I was again able to read what I wanted and when I wanted again but not everybody does that. I was actually reading a lot before going to high school.
I expect that the Danish educational system might be hammering the fun out of reading in a similar way. Getting kids to read is easier if you give them the right books. If you've ever seen a small kid completely absorbed in a book you know what I'm talking about. I was like that. Force feeding kids dreary literary works is not necessarily the best way to get people into reading. The main learning that re-enforces in kids is that apparently they don't like reading. It's counter productive.
And of course the elephant in the room here is that Denmark is not a big country and that there are probably only so many Danish authors actually worth reading. A good benchmark would be counting the ones that get translated and have an international audience. The same is true in the Netherlands. Only a handful of authors that publishers consider worth translating. And of course the education system puts a lot of emphasis on a handful of native authors that the rest of the world would never have heard about.
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.
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.
In this day and age, text is abundantly accessible at all levels of complexity, and you can generate infinitely more with LLMs. Affordability is not an obstacle to developing reading comprehension, and hasn't been for a long time.
>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.
This will make no difference at all to the reading skills of Danish 15 year olds. My three children are older than that and never read books. The do however read a lot of text and are perfectly competent at it. But the text they read is on a computer screen or a mobile and is rarely anything paid for, a lot of it is fan fiction related to a major online game.
The idea that you can convince a teenager who has grown up with the internet at their fingertips to buy books by reducing the price by 20% is laughable. And they won't read books provided at no cost either.
The 24% who cannot read well have simply been failed by the schools they attended and it is there that the politicians must look for the reasons and also the solutions.
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[ 1.8 ms ] story [ 36.0 ms ] threadAnd if you wonder why Denmark doesn't simply lower their VAT or introduce a split VAT system like in most other countries; the answer is technical inertia (or technical debt, if you will). Most Danish accounting and banking systems are hardcoded to assume 25% (or nothing). So if a politician want immediate change to VAT, removing it from a category of goods/services is their only option.
Edit: I realise I was careless in my wording, when I wrote "hardcoded to assume 25% (or nothing)"; I meant that the systems only assume one rate (or nothing), not that the value of 25% was hardcoded (though it is in a few (lesser) systems I've encountered). I apologise for the confusion.
Sure, it can't hurt, but are those kids or their parents gonna go out and buy books, and then, you know, learn how to read?
I wonder what the numbers are like in the US...
I love HN for being a place for discussion. But most social media is a one way trend setting communication. Miss it and you are out of touch with everybody else. And it moves fast.
What people need is time for themselves with their own thoughts. That creates the opportunity to read and do other things. A phone that requires 100% of your attention span does not allow for that. And big tech puts billions on tracking and data gathering to better know what keeps people hooked and dependent.
https://w.ouzu.im/lit/birretuda
Seriously though, I think the problem is not so much the particular tax on books (though this measure would help) but the way those taxes are computed.
This is just a dumb idea, but if a company or a person has X amount of money to put into a product that then can be sold in essentially free-to-produce copies at a Y price, and then a consumer spends an amount of time Z consuming it, then there should be a tax computed on those three variables X, Y, Z. The idea being that huge actors with high X can end up having a lot of Z. And Z is citizen time, which is dangerous to let it be captured by the interests of big capital in detriment to the interests of lesser capital and other people. But I guess that sounds too socialist :-( .
So, in 2015, 20% of 15-yo could not understand a simple text. Isn't that unbelievably high?
I'm definitely a bit price sensitive. For me the sweet spot is around 10 euros. Anything above is kind of a big expense and I'll think twice. But a book priced around 7 euros I'll just buy it even if I'm not 100% sure if I'll like it. I might be reading a lot less if those prices were creeping up. So, I can see how this might help more Danes get more into reading.
Reading books is something that high school erodes as a pleasurable activity (by making you read the wrong stuff). I got back into reading after high school when I was again able to read what I wanted and when I wanted again but not everybody does that. I was actually reading a lot before going to high school.
I expect that the Danish educational system might be hammering the fun out of reading in a similar way. Getting kids to read is easier if you give them the right books. If you've ever seen a small kid completely absorbed in a book you know what I'm talking about. I was like that. Force feeding kids dreary literary works is not necessarily the best way to get people into reading. The main learning that re-enforces in kids is that apparently they don't like reading. It's counter productive.
And of course the elephant in the room here is that Denmark is not a big country and that there are probably only so many Danish authors actually worth reading. A good benchmark would be counting the ones that get translated and have an international audience. The same is true in the Netherlands. Only a handful of authors that publishers consider worth translating. And of course the education system puts a lot of emphasis on a handful of native authors that the rest of the world would never have heard about.
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.
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 :)
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.
The idea that you can convince a teenager who has grown up with the internet at their fingertips to buy books by reducing the price by 20% is laughable. And they won't read books provided at no cost either.
The 24% who cannot read well have simply been failed by the schools they attended and it is there that the politicians must look for the reasons and also the solutions.