Keeping the Books Outside Austria, and the Records That May Not Leave

The paragraph does four separate things, and reading them as one permission is where most foreign owners go wrong. The first sentence permits. The second creates a duty that is triggered by a demand. The third creates a duty that exists without any demand at all. The fourth sets a condition over everything else.

The third is the one worth reading in the original:

Den Büchern und Aufzeichnungen zu Grunde zu legende Grundaufzeichnungen sind, wenn sie im Ausland geführt werden, innerhalb angemessener Frist in das Inland zu bringen und im Inland aufzubewahren; diese Verpflichtung entfällt hinsichtlich jener Vorgänge, die einem im Ausland gelegenen Betrieb, einer im Ausland gelegenen Betriebsstätte oder einem im Ausland gelegenen Grundbesitz zuzuordnen sind.

Underlying records that are to be taken as the basis of the books and records must, if they are kept abroad, be brought into Austria within a reasonable period and retained in Austria; that duty falls away for transactions attributable to a business, a permanent establishment or real property situated abroad. Nobody has to ask for them first.

The word carries the heaviest duty in the paragraph and the Bundesabgabenordnung never defines it. A full-text search of the consolidated federal law in force on 18 September 2026 returns it in a single document: § 131 itself.

Two things fill the gap. The first is the paragraph's own second use of the word, in Z 2 lit. b: where books are kept, all cash receipts and cash payments should be recorded daily and individually in the books or in the underlying records behind them. So the underlying layer is where the daily cash detail is allowed to live, which says a good deal about the sort of material meant.

The second is the Verwaltungsgerichtshof, which has described the function rather than listing the documents. Underlying records serve the requirement of timeliness and the principle of voucher security, and by their nature and the way they are kept they must guarantee that a transaction can be established backwards from the later posting to the voucher (96/14/0118, 7 August 2001). That is a test any record can be put to, which is more useful than a list.

The exemption is written by transaction, not by company: it removes the duty for Vorgänge, transactions, that are attributable to a business, a permanent establishment or real property situated abroad.

So an Austrian GmbH whose only operation is in Austria has nothing inside the carve-out, wherever its owner lives and whoever does its bookkeeping, while an Austrian company with a genuine foreign branch has the branch's transactions inside it and its own outside it.

Both codes set the same test in the same words, and it is the test a foreign accounting system has to survive. The books must be kept so that they can give a knowledgeable third party an overview of the business transactions within a reasonable time, and the individual transactions must be traceable in their origin and their processing (BAO § 131 Abs. 1 and UGB § 190 Abs. 1).

Two of the rules that follow bite hardest on a system built elsewhere, and both are soll provisions, whose consequence is §§ 163 and 184 below rather than a penalty. Accounts recording dealings with trading partners should carry those partners' names and addresses (§ 131 Abs. 1 Z 3). And where the transactions are captured by machine, the connection between individual postings, and between postings and vouchers, should be clearly evidenced by cross-references or posting marks, with the totals traceable (Abs. 2). Two more sit alongside them: loose-leaf records go into a running register of accounts, and vouchers are kept in such order that the entries can be checked at any time (Z 4 and Z 5).

The books should be kept in a living language and in the characters of one (§ 131 Abs. 1 Z 1). English satisfies that, and so does the commercial code's version of it, which adds that any abbreviation, figure, letter or symbol used must have an unambiguously fixed meaning in the individual case (UGB § 190 Abs. 2).

Two costs sit behind the permission. Where the books are not in an official language admitted for that taxpayer in the tax procedure, the authority may require a certified translation of the books, the records, their vouchers, the business papers and the other documents within § 132 Abs. 1. And where a translation is needed to carry out an audit under §§ 147 to 153, the taxpayer arranges it at his own cost, for which providing a suitable interpreter is enough.

The annual accounts are a different instrument and follow a different rule: euro and German, under UGB § 193 Abs. 4.

This is where a hosted system sits, and the tax code answers it in two provisions that are easy to read as one.

Keeping the books electronically is governed by § 131 Abs. 3: data carriers may be used where content-identical, complete and ordered reproduction is guaranteed at any time until the statutory retention period ends. Retaining vouchers, business papers and other documents electronically is governed by § 132 Abs. 2, which adds one requirement: the reproduction must also be faithful to the original, unless the document exists only on a data carrier, in which case that falls away. A born-digital invoice and a scan of a paper one are not held to the same standard.

Both send the bill to the same place. Whoever keeps or retains in that form must, at his own cost and within a reasonable period, provide the aids needed to make the material legible and, where necessary, supply permanent reproductions legible without aids, which under § 131 Abs. 3 are handed over on data carriers. UGB § 216 says the same on the commercial side. An audit does not come with its own licence to your accounting package.

Retention is where the two codes diverge most quietly. Both say seven years. They do not start counting on the same day, they do not cover the same material, and they extend for different reasons.

One wording difference is worth noticing inside the tax code itself. Books, records and the vouchers belonging to them are to be retained for seven years. Business papers and other documents, so far as they matter for tax collection, should be retained for seven years. Two classes, two formulas, and the second is the softer of the two the paragraph uses.

Nothing above is enforced by a fine in the first instance. It is enforced by what happens to the assessment.

The authority's own duty shrinks. BAO § 115 Abs. 1 obliges the authorities to investigate of their own motion, and then says in its second sentence that this obligation is limited by an increased duty of cooperation on the taxpayer, as for example in the case of foreign facts. The paragraph names Auslandssachverhalte, foreign facts, as its example and does not define them, so how far accounting kept outside Austria falls inside that example is a question of characterisation rather than of text.

The presumption goes. Books complying with §§ 131 and 131b carry the presumption of proper keeping and are the basis of the assessment (§ 163 Abs. 1). Abs. 2 names what removes it: grounds to doubt substantive correctness exist in particular where the bases cannot be ascertained and computed, or where a check of correctness and completeness is impossible because the duty to cooperate has been breached.

The estimate becomes mandatory. Where the authority cannot establish the bases it must estimate them (§ 184 Abs. 1), and Abs. 3 makes that compulsory where books that had to be kept are not produced, are substantively incorrect, or show formal defects apt to cast doubt on that correctness. Two further tracks run beside the assessment: the authority may compel compliance with its order by a coercive penalty, after a written demand and threat with a reasonable period, capped at EUR 5,000 for a single penalty (§ 111 Abs. 1 to Abs. 3); and intentionally breaching a tax-law duty to keep or retain books or records is a fiscal offence punishable by up to EUR 5,000 (FinStrG § 51 Abs. 1 lit. c with Abs. 2). What an estimate does to the tax itself belongs to how Austrian corporate tax is assessed.

The first sentence of § 131 Abs. 1 permits books abroad "unless another statute provides otherwise", and two statutes do. Where the documents to be audited, in particular the accounting, are kept or held abroad, a credit institution must ensure that the documents of the current financial year and at least three preceding financial years are available in Austria at any time (BWG § 60 Abs. 3). ZaDiG 2018 § 25 Abs. 4 imposes the same on a payment institution. That is a standing availability duty rather than a duty triggered by a demand, and it reaches three years back. It is one of the quieter costs of how a payment institution is authorised in Austria.

• Bundesabgabenordnung § 131, books abroad, the underlying records, language, form and data carriers, in force from 1 January 2026; § 132, retention and the three clocks; § 115 Abs. 1, the increased duty to cooperate; § 163, the presumption and what removes it; § 184, the estimate; and § 111, the coercive penalty. Cited in text with their paragraph: § 124, § 125, § 126, § 128, § 131b, § 132a, § 138 and §§ 147 to 153.
• Unternehmensgesetzbuch § 190, how the books are kept and the electronic form, and § 212, retention. Cited in text: § 189, § 193 Abs. 4 and § 216.
• Verwaltungsgerichtshof 96/14/0118 of 7 August 2001, what underlying records are for; Ra 2019/13/0118 of 30 September 2021, drivers' settlement slips; and Ra 2024/15/0052 of 10 November 2025, non-production and the power to estimate. Cited in text: 2007/13/0034 of 20 January 2010.
• Bankwesengesetz § 60 Abs. 3, availability in Austria. Cited in text: Zahlungsdienstegesetz 2018 § 25 Abs. 4, Finanzstrafgesetz § 51 and Wirtschaftstreuhandberufsgesetz 2017 § 124 Abs. 1 Z 1.

• Company Registration Austria: Accounting Services in Austria: who must keep books in Austria, and who may lawfully keep them.
• Company Registration Austria: Annual Accounts and Audit Requirements in Austria: the size classes, the audit and the filing.
• Company Registration Austria: The Austrian Company Register: what the Firmenbuch records and what it does not.