Children's colouring and activity books are usually zero-rated (0% VAT) in the UK, but only if they meet HMRC's conditions: suitable for under-18s and not sold as an adult product (HMRC VAT Notice 701/10, paragraph 3.8).
Children's colouring and activity books
0% VAT
Children's picture, colouring and activity books are zero-rated.
HMRC VAT Notice 701/10, paragraph 3.8
0% as long as it's:
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3.8 is generous about the format and strict about who the book is for. Zero-rated: children's painting and drawing books with sample pictures to copy or outlines to colour, books with invisible outlines revealed by pencil or water, painting books with the paints included as a palette, and activity books that mix colouring with puzzles and quizzes. Then the part that decides the adult titles. HMRC says a colouring or dot-to-dot book is zero-rated only if it does not include content that is only suitable for adults, and is not advertised or held out for sale as an adult product. It names four themes that make content unsuitable for under-18s regardless of how it is sold: profanity, pornography or gratuitous nudity, violence, and depictions of illegal acts. Each has an exception for classical literature, scientific anatomical drawings, and scenes clearly based on historic events, religious stories or dramatic works.
Content and marketing. Any of the four adult themes, or the words adult or grown-up on the cover, and it is 20%.
The zero rate applies as long as it's: suitable for under-18s and not sold as an adult product. If any one of those isn't true, it isn't zero-rated, so it's 20%.
If your printer does the design, typesetting or finishing as part of the same zero-rated print job, that work can be zero-rated too. Design bought separately from a studio is a standard-rated service.
HMRC VAT Notice 701/10, paragraph 3.8, HMRC's guidance on zero rating books and printed matter. See the notices we work from.
Exactly the first item 3.8 lists.
3.8 names activity books that combine colouring with puzzles and the like.
HMRC says a colouring book is zero-rated only if it is not advertised or held out for sale as an adult product.
Difficulty is not one of the four themes, and nothing in 3.8 requires a book to say it is for children.
Profanity in the title, text or images is the first of the four themes that make a book unsuitable for under-18s.