Advertising tax
The advertising tax is a tax of five percent that only exists in Austria in its general form on paid advertising services by third parties. Self-promotion is only partially tax-free; the Ministry of Finance has waived the tax obligation in various areas and abolished it in others. The tax debtor is the advertising company who carries out the advertising measure. The income from the advertising tax has been around 100 million euros per year since 2004.
The origin of the tax is the announcement tax from 1927, which was limited to five years. However, it still existed in the Second Republic and was mostly ten percent, but occasionally also 30%. The levy was a matter for the federal states and municipalities and the tax rate was inconsistent, and it was often limited to the larger cities. Tyrol waives the tax entirely. The distribution of competencies across municipalities and states led to double taxation and tax competitions. The regulation that advertisers had to pay the fee at their company location meant that many Viennese publishers formally fled to the surrounding area in order to avoid the fee. The NEWS group in Vienna even refused to pay from November 1999 to force a legal review, which no longer came about because the federal law became valid. The ORF , which was subject to tax in Vienna, was also obliged by Vorarlberg to make partial payments from 1994 onwards . ORF advertising moved to St. Pölten without further ado , where the levy was introduced a little later. The city of Vienna tried to counteract this in 1998 with the studio principle, according to which the location of the broadcasting studio is decisive.
In December 1998 the Constitutional Court found that the announcement tax for electronic media had to be paid according to the number of recipients in the individual municipalities; the tax would have become more chaotic for those liable to pay the fee. In response to this, the nationwide Advertising Tax Act 2000 came into effect on June 1, 2000, with which the tax fell to 5%, but was expanded nationwide.
literature
- ↑ Constitutional Court of December 17, 1998, G 15/98, V 9/98