Austrian Parliament Approves Digital Tax

by Ulrika Lomas, Tax-News.com, Brussels

27 September 2019

On September 19, 2019, the lower house of the Austrian parliament approved the first part of a package of tax reforms that will introduce a digital tax as well as bring about changes to certain value-added tax rules.

The digital tax will apply to companies with global sales of at least EUR750m (USD824m) and with digital advertising sales in Austria of EUR25m or more from 2020.

In other measures intended to tighten the tax rules surrounding the digital economy, from 2020, digital platforms will assume full liability for tax disclosure obligations. In practice, this will mean that booking platforms will be required to report all sales to the tax authority.

Additionally, the bill removes the VAT exemption for imports of small consignments below EUR22.

Under another VAT measure, the rate of VAT on supplies of electronic publications will be reduced to 10 percent, in line with the rate of VAT currently applied to physical publications. E-publications are currently subject to VAT at the 20 percent standard rate.

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