The Hardest Deadline in Austrian Employment
Before Work Starts

Here is the operative sentence, in the version in force from 1 January 2026, as amended by BGBl. I Nr. 25/2025:

"Die Dienstgeber haben jede von ihnen beschäftigte, nach diesem Bundesgesetz in der Krankenversicherung pflichtversicherte Person (Vollversicherte und Teilversicherte) vor Arbeitsantritt beim zuständigen Krankenversicherungsträger anzumelden und binnen sieben Tagen nach dem Ende der Pflichtversicherung abzumelden."

Employers must register every person they employ who is compulsorily insured for health cover under the Act, fully or partly insured, with the competent health insurance carrier before work is taken up, and deregister them within seven days of the end of compulsory insurance.

Vor Arbeitsantritt is the phrase, and it is not a period. It fixes a point: the filing is complete before the first minute of work, not on the first day, not in the first week, and not with the first payroll run. The second sentence of Abs. 1 then does something quietly useful. The registration made for health insurance also takes effect for accident and pension insurance so far as the person is compulsorily insured in those branches, so one filing serves three branches of social insurance, and it still has to be made by the same moment.

Why the deadline sits where it does is in a different paragraph, and it is the fact that makes the rest of the article make sense. ASVG § 10 Abs. 1 provides that compulsory insurance for employees, for persons in marginal employment under § 5 Abs. 2 and for the free service contractors of § 4 Abs. 4 begins "unabhängig von der Erstattung einer Anmeldung mit dem Tag des Beginnes der Beschäftigung": independently of whether any registration was filed, on the day the employment begins. Cover is created by the work, not by the paperwork. The registration reports something that has already happened by operation of law, which is why it has no grace period and why filing it late cannot be repaired by dating it early.

The part most descriptions leave out is that § 33 Abs. 1a splits the registration in two, and the second half has weeks rather than minutes. Abs. 1a Z 1 lists what the employer reports before work starts, and Z 2 sends everything else along with the monthly contribution basis for the period in which the employment began.

One item in step one is new. Comparing the two consolidated versions of § 33 line by line, the amendment that took effect on 1 January 2026 changed exactly one thing in the whole paragraph: it added the extent of the agreed working time to the list in Abs. 1a Z 1. The version in force to 31 December 2025 did not ask for it. Nothing else in § 33 moved.

That matters practically. Agreed working time is the only item on the list that is a term of the employment rather than a fact about the person, so it is the one an employer can still be negotiating on the morning the work begins. It now has to be settled before then.

There is a seven-day rule in § 33, and it is the single most misunderstood sentence in the Austrian registration regime. It is § 33 Abs. 1b:

"Erfolgt die Anmeldung nach Abs. 1a Z 1 nicht mittels elektronischer Datenfernübertragung, so ist die elektronische Übermittlung (§ 41 Abs. 1) unbeschadet des § 41 Abs. 4 innerhalb von sieben Tagen ab dem Beginn der Pflichtversicherung nachzuholen."

Where the registration under Abs. 1a Z 1 is not made by electronic remote data transmission, the electronic transmission has to be made up within seven days of the start of compulsory insurance.

Read the condition rather than the number. The sentence assumes a registration that was made before work started, by some route other than the electronic one, and gives the employer seven days to convert it into the electronic form the system runs on. It repairs the form. It does nothing to the timing, and it does not begin to operate until a pre-start filing exists.

The mechanism it points at is ASVG § 41. Abs. 1 makes electronic remote data transmission the rule for the filings under § 33 and § 34, in the uniform data records fixed by the umbrella association. Abs. 4 is the exception and it is narrow in an unusual way: a filing made outside electronic transmission "gelten nur dann als erstattet", counts as made only if it follows the guidelines issued under § 30a Abs. 1 Z 29, the association's rules on exceptions from electronic filing. Those guidelines must rank the alternative routes and admit a lower-ranked one only where a higher-ranked route is economically unreasonable for the employer, and the last sentence of Abs. 4 requires them to provide for telephone and fax filing specifically for the pre-start step. The guidelines themselves are not part of the consolidated federal law and this article does not state their content.

So the architecture is coherent: the pre-start moment is absolute, the channel is not. If the connection is down, the law contemplates that the employer still reports the person before they start, by a route the guidelines allow, and catches up electronically inside seven days. The word unbeschadet, without prejudice, does that work: the non-electronic filing still counts as a filing, and the catch-up is an additional duty rather than a condition of validity.

And the statute proves the point itself, in a third paragraph. If the seven days repaired the timing, a missed seven days would have no separate consequence: it would collapse back into the pre-start breach. It does not. ASVG § 114 Abs. 1 Z 1 gives the seven days a penalty of its own, owed where the registration "nicht innerhalb von sieben Tagen ab dem Beginn der Pflichtversicherung mittels elektronischer Datenfernübertragung oder gemäß § 41 Abs. 4 erstattet wurde". Two triggers, two consequences, which is only possible if they are two deadlines.

The intuition that a small job sits outside the system is the second commonest error here, and the statute closes it through a chain of three paragraphs rather than in one sentence.

§ 5 Abs. 1 Z 2 takes a marginally employed person out of full insurance. § 5 Abs. 2 defines marginal employment as a month's pay not above a base amount of EUR 425.70, uprated each contribution year; the amount in force for 2026 is EUR 551.10, published in the annual contribution values on the Kundmachung BGBl. II Nr. 263/2025 of 28 November 2025. ASVG § 7 Z 3 lit. a then puts exactly those people, the ones § 5 Abs. 1 Z 2 excluded from full insurance, into accident insurance. And § 33 Abs. 2 applies the whole of Abs. 1 to persons compulsorily insured only for accident and pension cover, or only for accident cover under § 7 Z 3 lit. a, with the filings going to the health insurance carrier that would have been competent had there been health cover.

Follow the chain and the answer is unambiguous: a marginal employee is registered before work starts, on the same terms as everybody else. So is a freier Dienstnehmer, the free service contractor of § 4 Abs. 4, whom § 10 Abs. 1 also brings into cover on the day the work begins.

One genuine softening exists and it is not a general one. § 33 Abs. 3 allows a health insurance carrier to provide in its own statutes that, for people employed on irregular single days by the same employer under an arrangement agreed for less than a week, the period for registering and deregistering the days falling in a calendar month may start on the first of the following month, where that serves administrative simplification. It is an enabling power addressed to the carrier, not a right the employer can assume.

ASVG § 35 Abs. 1 defines the Dienstgeber as the person for whose account the business, administration, household or activity is run in which the employee stands in the employment, and it says so expressly even where the employee was engaged through an intermediary or is referred wholly or partly to payments from a third party instead of wages. An employer cannot put an agency between itself and the duty by contract alone.

Two departures from that are in the same paragraph, and neither is well known outside Austria.

The duty can be delegated, and the delegate takes on the exposure. Abs. 3 lets the employer transfer performance of the § 33 and § 34 duties to an authorised representative, whose name and address go to the competent carrier with that representative's own countersignature. The consequence sits elsewhere in the Act: § 111 Abs. 1 makes the offence available against someone acting "als bevollmächtigte Person nach § 35 Abs. 3" in their own person, alongside the employer. A notified representative is not a messenger.

And where the employer has no Austrian establishment, the duty moves to the employee. Abs. 4 lit. b requires the employee to make the § 33 and § 34 filings themselves where the employer has no Betriebsstätte, branch, business office or depot in Austria, except where the Act applies by virtue of Regulation (EEC) No 1408/71 or Regulation (EC) No 883/2004. Two further cases sit beside it: lit. a, extraterritorial privileges or immunities, and lit. c, the service-cheque scheme. Which limb catches a given cross-border arrangement turns on facts and on the coordination rules, and this article decides that for nobody. It does say that "we have no office in Austria, so nobody had to file anything" is not what the paragraph says.

A third group is dealt with separately again: § 36 moves the § 33 and § 34 duties onto named bodies for particular classes of insured person, such as the institution running a training relationship.

They are usually described as one thing. They are three, resting on three provisions, imposed by two authorities, and ending up before two different courts.

One, the contribution surcharge. ASVG § 113 Abs. 1 makes a Beitragszuschlag available after an immediate on-site detection where the registration "entgegen § 33 Abs. 1 nicht vor Arbeitsantritt erstattet wurde". Note the trigger: it keys on the pre-start failure and on nothing else. Abs. 2 sets two flat parts, EUR 400 for each person not registered before work started and EUR 600 for the inspection deployment, the second only where the detection was made by one of the services named in § 111 Abs. 4, which are the insurance carriers, the Amt für Betrugsbekämpfung and the federal tax authorities; any other body, and only the EUR 400 part is imposed. Abs. 3 allows relief on a first late registration with insignificant consequences: the EUR 400 part may fall away and the EUR 600 part drop to EUR 300. The verb throughout is können, may, so this one is discretionary.

Two, the administrative fine. ASVG § 111 Abs. 1 Z 1 makes it an offence to file the registration not at all, wrongly, or late, and names four categories of person who can commit it: the employer, another person under a duty to file under § 36, a person under a duty to give information under § 42 Abs. 1, and someone acting "als bevollmächtigte Person nach § 35 Abs. 3". Abs. 2 puts the fine at EUR 730 to EUR 2,180, on repetition EUR 2,180 to EUR 5,000, with up to two weeks' imprisonment where it cannot be recovered and a reduction to EUR 365 on a first offence of slight fault. Three details rarely appear in English: the limitation period is one year (Abs. 3); the carriers, the Amt für Betrugsbekämpfung and the federal tax authorities are obliged to report every such breach they meet on an inspection (Abs. 4); and the offence counts as committed where the employer's business has its seat (Abs. 5).

Three, the late-filing surcharge. This is the one the seven-day rule answers to, and the one most descriptions of § 33 leave out. ASVG § 114 Abs. 1 Z 1 attaches where the registration was not filed within seven days of the start of cover, electronically or by a route § 41 Abs. 4 allows; Z 2 attaches where the data missing from step one did not travel with the right monthly report. Abs. 2 sets EUR 50, uprated each contribution year under Abs. 4: for 2026 the annotation to the paragraph gives EUR 70.00, fixed by BGBl. II Nr. 263/2025. Its imposition is not discretionary, the paragraph reading "werden Säumniszuschläge vorgeschrieben", though Abs. 7 lets the carrier waive or refund it on the kind of breach, the debtor's circumstances, the length of the delay and the record of past filings.

The split matters because it decides who you are dealing with. A carrier imposing a § 113 surcharge must issue a formal notice (§ 410 Abs. 1 Z 5), and a carrier's notice goes on appeal to the Bundesverwaltungsgericht (§ 414 Abs. 1). The fine runs on another track: the Bezirksverwaltungsbehörde decides it as an administrative offence, and § 111a gives the tax authority or the Amt für Betrugsbekämpfung whose officers found the breach party status in that penal proceeding, with an appeal to the Landesverwaltungsgericht and then the Verwaltungsgerichtshof; where they waive it, the carrier steps into that position.

§ 33 has a fourth subsection that most summaries skip, and it turns the usual worry inside out. Abs. 1c provides that a registration filed by an undertaking that has been determined by notice to be a Scheinunternehmen, a sham undertaking, is inadmissible and does not count as a filing under § 41 at all. The affected people are then called on to give information under § 43 Abs. 4.

The determination is not the carrier's to make. Under § 35a Abs. 1 the carriers are bound by a final determination of the Amt für Betrugsbekämpfung under § 8 of the Sozialbetrugsbekämpfungsgesetz, and Abs. 2 has that office pass its notifications, rebuttals and notices to them. Abs. 3 carries the consequence that reaches an ordinary business: where people who answered a summons have shown credibly that they really worked in the sphere of a sham undertaking and their employer cannot be established, the undertaking that placed the order is treated as the employer from the date of the final determination, if it knew or had to know what its contractor was and cannot prove it received no work from those people. For a foreign company buying labour through an Austrian subcontractor, that is the exposure worth understanding before it arises: a registration you never had to make can become yours, retrospectively, on somebody else's failure.

Three boundaries, stated plainly because each of them is a different regime with a different deadline.

The self-employed are on the other side of the line. A shareholder appointed managing director, a sole trader or anyone else insured under the GSVG reports to the SVS, and the deadline there is not before work starts but within one month of the event, under GSVG § 18 Abs. 1. That is how the SVS treats a self-employed founder, a different rule rather than a variation on this one.

Wage tax is a separate filing to a separate authority. The § 33 registration covers three branches of social insurance and nothing else; the tax side runs on its own dates and the municipality is a third recipient again, all of it on the payroll page linked at the top.

And this article describes the obligation rather than offering to discharge it. Running a payroll, Lohnverrechnung, is an activity Austrian law reserves, and WTBG 2017 § 124 Abs. 1 Z 1 makes even offering a reserved activity an administrative offence carrying a fine of up to EUR 20,000. We form Austrian companies, provide the registered office and run the corporate administration, and where an employee has to be registered we introduce a professional authorised to do it and work alongside them. We do not register employees, file contribution bases or act for anybody before a health insurance carrier. Nor does anything here apply the law to a reader's own position, which is reserved to a licensed Steuerberater (WTBG 2017 § 2 Abs. 1).

Read on 18 September 2026 in the consolidated federal law published by the Bundeskanzleramt as open data, Gesetzesnummer 10008147.

• ASVG, BGBl. Nr. 189/1955: § 4 Abs. 2 and Abs. 4, § 5 Abs. 1 Z 2 and Abs. 2, § 7 Z 3 lit. a, § 10 Abs. 1, § 33 in the version in force from 1 January 2026 and in the version in force to 31 December 2025, § 34, § 35, § 35a, § 36, § 41, § 43 Abs. 4, § 45 Abs. 1, § 59 Abs. 1, § 111, § 111a, § 113, § 114, § 410 Abs. 1 and § 414 Abs. 1.
• Kundmachung BGBl. II Nr. 263/2025 of 28 November 2025, the annual contribution values: the marginal threshold of EUR 551.10 and the § 114 surcharge of EUR 70.00 for 2026.
• WTBG 2017, BGBl. I Nr. 137/2017 as amended by BGBl. I Nr. 6/2026, Gesetzesnummer 20009983: § 2 Abs. 1 and § 124 Abs. 1 Z 1, for the reserved-activity boundary.
• Unternehmensserviceportal, the federal business portal, English page Registering employees, read the same day, for the administration's own statement of the duty and of the data set.