COPENHAGEN: Worried by a "reading crisis", Denmark's government will eliminate its sales tax on books, looking to get more citizens buying them, the culture minister said Wednesday.
The Scandinavian country's 25-percent tax on books is currently the highest in Europe, and stands in stark contrast with countries such as Britain that charge no sales tax on book purchases.
"We need to do all we can to fix this reading crisis that has unfortunately spread in recent years," Culture Minister Jakob Engel-Schmidt told news agency Ritzau, announcing the government's budget bill would propose eliminating the sales tax on books.
The measure would cost the state an estimated 330 million kroner ($51 million) a year.
The latest education report from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) raised alarm in Denmark when it found 24 percent of Danish 15-year-olds cannot understand a simple text, up four percentage points in a decade.
Denmark's publishing industry had pushed for the tax cut, saying in a May report the government needed to "guarantee access to physical books for all Danes -- both children and adults".