2/10/2018

NewsBrands Ireland welcomes today’s decision by the EU Finance Ministers 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 Minister to introduce the same VAT rate for online content as printed content.

The chairman of NewsBrands Ireland, Vincent Crowley said “NewsBrands Ireland has been advocating for the alignment of VAT on printed newspapers and digital subscriptions for many years. 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.”

 Note: NewsBrands Ireland is the representative body for all national newspapers – print and online.