Denmark Books Books Tax to Combat “Reading Crisis”

The Danish government has announced that it will cancel a 25 % sales tax on books, in an attempt to combat the “reading crisis”.

The tax is one of the highest rates in the world. Culture Minister Jacob Engel Schmidt says he hopes that this will lead to it, provided that this will lead to more books that fly on the shelves.

This procedure is expected to cost about 330 million kronor ($ 50 million, 38 million pounds) per year.

OECD data, an international government research tank, shows that a quarter of Danish children between the ages of 15 years cannot understand a simple text.

“The reading crisis has unfortunately spread in recent years,” said Angel Schmidt. He added that he was “incredibly proud” of this step to cancel the tax.

“Huge funds must be spent on investing in the consumption and culture of” the Danish people.

In Finland, Sweden, and Norway – which also has a standard added value tax of 25 % such as Denmark – Valuable Valuable Tax is 14 %, 6 % and 0 %, respectively. In the United Kingdom, books are free from this.

Rosndal Tomsen, deputy head of the government working group in literature, said that investigative studies have shown low levels of reading and understanding among Danish adolescents.

“Young children can easily improve their reading skills,” told BBC. “But at the age of 15, the ability to understand the text is very important.”

He said that the numbers were “somewhat shock”, referring to the research of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Young people fight with reading because they have “many options” and can “distract me easily.”

He said that removing VAT on books was not a complete solution, but it would make the books “more easy.”

The government work group on literature also considered ways to export Danish literature, digitization on the book market and influence the authors’ salaries.