Sheet music is usually zero-rated (0% VAT) in the UK, but only if it meets HMRC's conditions: printed music (blank manuscript paper is 20%) (HMRC VAT Notice 701/10, paragraph 3.9).
Sheet music
0% VAT
Printed music of any kind, bound or on loose sheets, in any notation.
HMRC VAT Notice 701/10, paragraph 3.9
0% as long as it's:
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3.9 goes out of its way to say how widely printed music runs: instrumental or vocal, printed or handwritten, bound or on loose sheets, illustrated or not, in any system of notation including numerical symbols and Braille. Two exclusions sit at the end of the paragraph. Music rolls are standard-rated, and so is blank music manuscript, which is stationery in the same way graph paper is. A third sits in section 7: a piece of music commissioned from a composer is a standard-rated service, because the notice treats original composition as a service with the paper incidental to it.
Printed music is zero-rated. Blank staves to write on are not, and neither is composing it.
The zero rate applies as long as it's: printed music (blank manuscript paper is 20%). 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 3.9, HMRC's guidance on zero rating books and printed matter. See the notices we work from.
Printed music, bound or on loose sheets, is zero-rated.
Blank music manuscript is named as standard-rated.
A piece of music commissioned from a composer is a standard-rated service under 7.2.