<![CDATA[I have been an Amazon customer for about ten years and I am sure that when I first started ordering books from the UK to where I live in Denmark they didn't charge VAT (sales tax) because books are zero-rated in the UK.
Then they did which eroded the reason for using them a lot and meant that I would only use Amazon if I couldn’t get the books online from anyone else. What intrigued me was that other online book sellers in the UK were not charging me VAT. So I queried this with Amazon who told me that these were EU regulations.
So my next ploy was to ask family members to order them on my behalf and have them delivered to me in Denmark. I was amazed that Amazon charged them Danish VAT if they did this so I stopped asking them.
A few days ago I went back to Amazon to order a couple of books to be sent to various family members in the UK as Christmas gifts and I was not charged VAT. It makes me wonder if this so-called VAT which I have been paying in recent years ever made it into the Danish tax coffers.
A boring topic maybe but it hits my pocket and I have a vestigial interest in the EU having written a textbook about it some years back.]]>