A recipe book is a book like any other: pages of reading matter bound in a cover stiffer than the pages. Photographs make no difference, since a book may be illustrations as readily as text. Being used in a kitchen and kept for twenty years makes no difference either, because the kept and used test at 3.3 is about what stops something being a leaflet, and this is not a leaflet, it is a book. The place recipes lose the zero rate is when they stop being bound: a set of loose recipe cards is reference material kept in a box, which HMRC names as outside the leaflet meaning.
What decides it?
Bound as a book, or loose cards in a box.
Is the design and artwork for recipe books zero-rated too?
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.
Where does this come from?
HMRC VAT Notice 701/10, section 8, HMRC's guidance on zero rating books and printed matter. See the notices we work from.
Some real jobs
A hardback recipe book with photography0%
Recipe books are listed as zero-rated, and illustration is no obstacle.
