VAT - Five common Questions
Please note that these answers are by no means comprehensive and merely act as a general guide.

1. Does the thickness of the paper matter when deciding the VAT liability of a leaflet?
   No. The thickness of the paper on which the leaflet is printed is no longer the sole determining factor. The VAT liability is now based upon a matter of fact and impression.
1. Is it designed to be held in the hand and read?
2. Is it a single sheet of paper not greater than A4?
3. Is it due to be widely distributed?
4. Does it convey information?
5. Will it invariably be thrown away after it has been read?
   
   
2. Is all work for charities zero-rated?
   No. The rules on printing for charities are the same as for any other business when you are providing printing services or printed matter.
   The only extra relief available to charities is the supply of printed goods in connection with collecting monetary donations i.e. pre-printed letters, the primary purpose of which is to appeal for money.
1. If the package contains more zero than standard rated items, the package, as a whole, can be zero-rated.
2. If the package contains more standard than zero rated items, the package, as a whole, can be standard rated.
3. If there are an equal number of items the apportionment can be based on the cost of the goods.
   
   
3. What is the package test?
   This relates to where you have a contract to provide a mixture of standard rated and zero-rated items (a package), which are ALL printed matter. You can either account for VAT by apportioning them between the separate elements or alternatively by concession:
   
   
4. When is the supply of printing free?
   To be exempt of any VAT liability you must ensure that when supplying "free" printing, nothing is being received in return for the printing provided.
   For a VAT liability to occur the consideration received in return for the supply of printing does not necessarily have to be monetary.
   For example, if you are allowed to place an advertisement on posters in exchange for printing them, you will be making a taxable supply (either zero or standard rated) as the consultation for the printing is deemed to be value of the advertisement received. This is a barter-type transaction.
   
   You will therefore need to raise an invoice for the VAT on the market value of the advertisement received. The invoice should state that no payment was due and that the goods had been received.
   
   
5. Is printed matter that leaves the UK subject to VAT?
   All goods sold to customers outside of the UK are zero rated provided these conditions are met.
1. The goods leave the UK within 3 months of the product being completed.
2. Commercial evidence that the goods have left the UK is retained.

For customers resident in other EC countries, their VAT numbers are obtained and included on the sales invoices.

A full copy of the HM Customs and Excise guide to VAT on printing can be downloaded here

Rich black
Is a term used in printing to refer to a mixture containing all four of the cyan, magenta, yellow and black (CMYK) colors. Less frequently it could be a mixture of black and some other ink.

A typical rich black mixture might be 100% black ink and 50% of each of the other 3 inks. This is necessary because no black ink is truly black and the mixture helps to make the black even more black. While in theory an even richer black can be made by using 100% of each of the four inks, in practice the amount of non-black ink added is limited by the wetness that the paper and printing process can handle. Wetness is not a problem with laser printers, however, and "400%" (as it is also known) produces very striking results in laser prints. Interesting effects can also be achieved with a laser printer by combining 100% black and 100% of cyan, magenta, or yellow.

Rich black is often regarded as a color that is blacker than black. While this is nonsense from the point of view of color theory, the difference can often be seen in the printed piece. The difference can also be apparent in backlit also known as "translite" pieces, where rich black more thoroughly blocks the light from coming through.

The use of rich black has to be based on a full understanding of the printing conditions, including the inks, printing press and especially the paper. If too much ink is used on poor quality paper such as newsprint it may simply fall apart. In addition, excessive amounts of ink may not have a chance to dry before the printed result comes into contact with other pages. Finally, rich black, because it uses more ink, will have higher costs.

Care must be taken when using electronic design programs. Photoshop's "default"; black (the color used when the 'D' key on the keyboard is pressed) is not typically 100K. (Though in RGB documents, 00-00-00 is used.) The value chosen for black in CMYK mode depends on the CMYK profile chosen in color settings. If you make a document in Photoshop with various blacks, Photoshop will actually use different not-quite-black RGB values to draw them on the screen. Adobe Illustrator and InDesign, on the other hand, default to 100K.

Another reason to use rich black for small areas of black is to avoid trapping issues. Rich black is often used for text printed over a picture or colored background, because otherwise any slight mis-registration between printing plates would produce a white or colored halo around the text, making it much harder to read.

In some cases the process of preparing a work to print may include conversions to CMYK from RGB or other color spaces. The amount of black mixed with C,M,Y inks can be expressed as a process of under color removal or under color addition, though increasingly the entire conversion process is done using an ICC profile which expresses both the conversion and the under color handling. Reference Wikipedia