[joelhaasnoot]

Ah yes - flat sales tax - County XYZ needs a new courthouse so decides to raise sales tax 0.5% within city limits. Not only more complicated, but doesn't seem very fair either. Our taxes are easier than the US system because it's a national tax. My main problem with this tax strategy is that we're "protecting" an industry (book publishers, sellers, etc) that's in decline and probably will stay that way. Taxing ebooks more isn't going to change that - the economics of bits vs printed pages are ofcourse also inverse as these tax rules.

[mrgoldenbrown]

The higher tax is not on all ebooks. It is on DRM'd ebooks in particular. The goal, as far as I can tell from the translated article, is to discourage DRM and "licensing" of content, and encourage DRM free formats.