A court has recently ruled on a dispute between the Tax Administration and several parties in higher education. At the heart of the case was the Tax Administration's refusal to apply the reduced tax rate to broad access to digital scientific and educational information. The court ruled in favour of the Tax Administration.
As a result, educational institutions will lose millions of euros annually in their efforts to provide open access to their publications, despite the government having pursued an open access policy for years. This makes the government’s own objective, 100% open access availability for scientific publications funded by public money, significantly more expensive. The educational parties are currently considering their next steps following the ruling.
Caspar van den Berg, Chairman of Universities of the Netherlands (UNL): "This ruling is not only disappointing but also exposes a contradiction in government policy: on the one hand, the government strives for 100% open access, while on the other, it undermines that goal with the high VAT rate, even though other digital publications do fall under the reduced rate. This places an unnecessary burden on researchers and institutions, while the government claims to want to stimulate innovation and knowledge sharing."
- More information
You can read the full article (Dutch only) on the Universities of the Netherlands website. There, you will also find the court's ruling and the letter from UNL to the court regarding the "Explanation of the publication process, the role of the publisher, and the consortium" (also Dutch only).
