I don't see any option with either the commerce VAT module or the Commerce tax module to specify tax dependent on product types.
Some of our products do not have VAT on them.
Also how the modules format the prices into a table is very unattractive and a nightmare to style the way we want.
Surely there are better options available?
Commerce VAT adds a field to the the products to specify the VAT rat to apply to the product. This is done on a product basis rather than on a product type basis.
However you can set the default value for the field on a product type basis.
Otherwise you can set a condition based on the product type to the tax rate rules.
You can improve the display of prices by using the Commerce Price by Component module and adding the price field to a view more than once, each time changing the components used in each (one being just the tax component for example).
Hope that gives you the information to get started working in the right direction.
To solve this issue I found this blog post to be very helpful
http://blogs.uoregon.edu/joshrose/2014/07/02/product-type-pricing-rules-...