Commercial data sent electronically liable for VAT

... in the UK / EU. Apparantly.

[Sanenet]

[theregister.co.uk...]

Anybody ever heard of this?

If you send commercial data by email or over the Web, it's liable for VAT (17.5 per cent value-added tax, imposed in the UK on services) on the value of the data. Which of course with commercial data can be quite high.

But if you print that same data out and send it on paper, by post or fax, it is not liable for VAT.

[Lord Majestic]

I actually had long conversation with HM Customs on this topic yesterday and it transpired that: as long as your company stays under 60k GBP per year turnover it does not have to charge VAT, if above then it charges VAT on electronic goods regardless if customer who buys them is outside of EU (ie USA).

This applies to digital books, however if you print these books then UK's VAT on (many of) them is 0%. Indeed a bit of a bummer to have to pay VAT on digital books where as printed ones don't have it :(

Note that they mention commercial data, ie sold for business purposes which is naturally being bought by businesses. If these businesses are registered for VAT themselves then they will get a refund. The VAT rules really hit consumer sales, rather than business ones.