The Scandinavian nation of Denmark is currently grappling with a worrying “reading crisis”, with data showing that a quarter of the country’s 15-year-olds cannot understand a simple text. As a result, its government has announced it will abolish its 25% sales tax on books, in a bid to tackle the emergency.
This tax is one of the highest in the world, and Culture Minister Jacob Engel-Schmidt hopes that scrapping it will lead to more books flying off the shelves. “The reading crisis has unfortunately been spreading in recent years,” the minister said, adding that he was “incredibly proud” of the move to scrap the tax. He said that such “massive money should be spent on investing in the consumption and culture” of the Danish people. The measure is expected to cost an eyewatering 330 million kroner (£38 million) a year.
Other Nordic countries also charge a standard rate of 25% VAT, but this does not apply to books. In Finland, the VAT on books is 14%, in Sweden 6%, and in Norway zero. In the UK, books are also VAT-free. Sweden reduced its VAT on books in 2001, which did deliver a rise in book sales, but analysis found they were bought by existing readers.
“It is also about getting literature out there,” said Engel-Schmidt. “That is why we have already allocated money for strengthened cooperation between the country’s public libraries and schools, so that more children can be introduced to good literature.”
Surveys have shown declining levels of reading and comprehension among Danish teenagers, said Mads Rosendahl Thomsen, vice-chair of the Government’s working group on literature. Younger children can easily improve their reading skills, “but at 15 the ability to understand a text is pretty important,” he told the BBC.
According to the national statistics office, 8.3 million books were sold in shops and online in Denmark in 2023. The country’s population is just over six million. The most popular genres were books for the very young, picture books and activity books, while crime, thrillers and suspense novels were second.
The numbers were “pretty shocking,” Mads Rosendahl Thomsen said, referring to the research conducted by the OECD, an intergovernmental think tank.
The main reason young people struggle with reading is because they have “so many options” and can be “easily distracted”.
He said that removing VAT on books was not a complete solution, but would allow books to become “more accessible”.
The Government’s working group on literature is also looking into ways to export Danish literature and digitalise the book market, as well as assessing the impact on authors’ pay. “I will of course monitor how prices develop. If it turns out that abolishing VAT only means that publishers’ profits grow and prices do not fall, then we must consider whether it was the right thing to do,” Mads Rosendahl Thomsen said.