Austria to introduce digital tax after failure of EU-wide plan

Austria will press ahead with a planned tax on Internet giants after plans for an EU-wide levy fell through this week, Finance Minister Hartwig Loeger said on Friday.

Austria said in January that it would tax firms like Google, Amazon, Facebook and Alibaba 3 percent of their advertising revenue from within Austria.

It said at the time that it would hold off on implementing that plan until a European Union finance ministers' meeting this week in case a deal was reached on an EU-wide digital tax, but ministers abandoned the idea when they met on Monday.