A further footnote - Brexit related. Many of these anomalies (print books zero-rated; e-books standard rated; chocolate biscuits standard rated; chocolate cakes zero-rated) have their roots in the fact that UK exemptions in force in 1972 were “frozen” when we joined the EEC.
We could keep the existing exemptions/zero rates - but not extend them.
That made it difficult to rationalise the position. You could only end the bizarre chocolate biscuit/cake distinction (immortalised in the Jaffa Cake litigation) by bringing chocolate cakes into tax. Not something Chancellors wanted to do.
And (for reasons that remain obscure to me) no Chancellor has wanted to impose standard rate VAT on print newspapers.
One genuine freedom the UK will get outside the EU is the ability to tidy up these distinctions without having to extend standard rated VAT.
Ending these distinctions will be regretted by no one apart from VAT lawyers.
The danger though is that if exemptions and zero rates are extended, you just move the distinction to a new place where economic distortions mushroom and VAT lawyers frolic.
