Luxembourg and France clearly broke free from European Union law at the beginning of 2012 when they lowered the VAT applied to ebooks, to 3 percent and 7 percent respectively–with Luxembourg’s move particularly advantaging international players like Amazon that as a legal matter “sell” ebooks across Europe from Luxembourg. Now, six months later, the European Commission has dispatched a stern letter: “This situation is creating serious distortions of competition that are damaging to economic operators in the other 25 Member States since digital books can easily be purchased in a State other than the one where the consumer resides and, […]
