French VAT rates
France has the reputation of having high taxes on everything. But does that stand for VAT rates? In France, they are as follows:
| VAT rates in France | ||
| Rate | designation | Type of product |
| 20% | Standard | All other taxable goods and services. |
| 10% | Reduced | Food, passenger transport, waste collection, etc. |
| 5.5% | Reduced | Food, Canteens, water supplies, etc. |
| 2.1% | Reduced | Pharmaceutical products, newspapers, public television fees, etc. |
| 0% | Zero | Intra-community and international transport (excluding road and inland waterways). |
For European standards, those are actually somewhat low. European directives did make efforts to have countries make their VAT rates more uniform, but out of all EU countries, only 4 have a standard rate lower than 20%. It’s often for them to go as high as 22% – 25%, even reaching 27% in Hungary.
Similar observations can be made for the reduced rate, where many countries only have one reduced rate that can go up to 15%. And a country like Denmark doesn’t even have a reduced rate at all.
As such, VAT rates in France are surprisingly low!
