Capital Gains Tax
in Austria

Not under that name, and looking for one is the first reason foreign sellers get the answer wrong. A gain falls into one of three heads of income, and the head decides the rate, the base, who pays the tax over and whether a non-resident is caught at all. The first is income from capital assets: EStG § 27 Abs. 3 covers realised increases in value, meaning income from the sale, redemption or other settlement of assets whose ongoing yield would itself be income from letting capital, and a share is such an asset. The second head is EStG § 30, private property disposals. The third is EStG § 31, speculative transactions, a residual head reaching private assets outside both of the others.

A corporation has no private assets, so its gain is part of its income and bears the corporate rate, which is how much corporation tax a company pays in Austria rather than anything here.

Four rates, each attached to a different kind of asset by a different paragraph. The versions and dates are in the caption, because a rate printed without them tells you less than it appears to.

One sentence matters as much as the numbers. EStG § 27a Abs. 1 and § 30a Abs. 1 each close by providing that income taxed at the special rate counts neither in the total amount of income nor in the income within EStG § 2 Abs. 2, so a gain does not push a salary into a higher band. The tariff never sees it, and what it does see is the income tax rate in austria. Both paragraphs let the seller apply for the ordinary tariff instead, all or nothing (§ 27a Abs. 5, § 30a Abs. 2).

EStG § 27a Abs. 3 Z 2 lit. a takes the difference between the disposal proceeds and the acquisition cost, in each case including pro-rata accrued interest. Three rules then change what "acquisition cost" means.

1. Incidental acquisition costs come out. EStG § 27a Abs. 4 Z 2 takes the cost of a privately held asset at the special rate without incidental acquisition costs, so brokerage and transaction charges on the purchase do not reduce the gain. Business assets are carved out of that sentence.

2. Several purchases become one average. For assets with the same security identification number in one depot, EStG § 27a Abs. 4 Z 3 sets the cost at the moving average price in euro, and Z 3a does the same for units of one cryptocurrency on a single address or wallet. You cannot choose which tranche you sold.

3. A gift carries its history with it. On a gratuitous acquisition the predecessor's cost governs (§ 27a Abs. 4 Z 1), so a gift does not reset the base to the value on the day the shares arrived.

On a listed holding the tax usually arrives without the seller doing anything. EStG § 95 Abs. 2 Z 2 lit. a makes the domestic depositary the party obliged to deduct capital yields tax on income from realised increases in value, and lit. b extends that to a domestic paying agent in one narrow case. Either can only be a credit institution under the Banking Act, a branch of a member-state credit institution or investment service provider, or an investment firm under WAG 2018 § 3.

None of them reaches a share in an unquoted company, because such a share is not held in a securities depot at all. That is not ours to infer alone: the Ministry of Finance states in English that where there is no domestic depositary paying capital gains tax in Austria, the income, so far as it is taxable, must be assessed by the taxpayer. So on the sale of a GmbH or FlexCo participation nobody withholds anything and no statement records the tax, unlike drawing profits out year by year: see austria dividend tax.

A non-resident is not taxed on everything Austrian. EStG § 1 Abs. 3 limits Austrian income tax to the domestic income listed in EStG § 98, and that list is closed. Two entries on it reach a gain, and they work differently.

A founder selling the company he formed is almost always above 1 percent, so the entry catches him, while an investor who never reached 1 percent in five calendar years is outside Austrian income tax on that gain altogether. And because the test looks backwards, selling down shortly before a disposal does not help.

Property has its own rate, base and collection machinery, and the machinery runs through the lawyer or notary handling the sale rather than through a bank.

Austria rewrote property taxation in 2012, and property already outside the old rules on the cut-off date never came fully inside the new ones. EStG § 30 Abs. 4 gives it a deemed acquisition cost expressed as a percentage of the proceeds. Those percentages change for disposals after 31 December 2026.

The route is open only "so far as property was not steuerverfangen on 31 March 2012, disregarding exemptions". That points back at the provision the 2012 reform replaced: the old EStG § 30, headed Spekulationsgeschäfte, set "not more than ten years" for land and rights subject to the civil law on land, extended to fifteen years where construction expenditure had been deducted in instalments under § 28 Abs. 3 within ten years of acquisition. The fifteen-year case is why a bare acquisition date is not a safe test. The seller may also apply to compute under Abs. 3 instead (Abs. 5), and the difference is increased by half of any § 28 Abs. 3 expenditure deducted within the fifteen years before the sale.

A separate surcharge was added in 2025 and applies alongside everything above. EStG § 30 Abs. 6a increases the positive income from disposing of rezoned land by an Umwidmungszuschlag of 30 percent where the rezoning took place after 31 December 2024, and only so far as income plus surcharge does not exceed the proceeds.

It was inserted by the Budgetbegleitgesetz 2025, BGBl. I Nr. 25/2025, and EStG § 124b Z 473 applies it first to disposals after 30 June 2025. It attaches to a rezoning within the second and third sentences of § 30 Abs. 4 Z 1, which reach a change of designation first permitting building to substantially the extent of Bauland, a rezoning economically connected with the sale and occurring within five years after it, and a price increase on a later rezoning. A later rezoning is a retroactive event under BAO § 295a that must be notified, and it is also where the discharging effect of any Immobilienertragsteuer already paid falls away under § 30b Abs. 2.

EStG § 30 Abs. 2 exempts four categories, and the first is the one most sellers rely on.

The statute says nothing about how much land the first exemption covers, and the courts have filled that silence. The Verwaltungsgerichtshof holds that it carries a limit by area: land belongs to the favoured home only to the extent "customarily required as a building plot", and on an average view a plot of up to 1,000 square metres is treated as sufficient. That is VwGH 24 April 2024, Ro 2022/15/0020, decided with Ro 2022/15/0044 the same day and reaffirmed in VwGH 17 December 2025, Ro 2025/13/0024. Two further holdings narrow the neighbouring reliefs: "self-built" in Z 2 catches in principle only a first erection, so neither an increase in living area nor a revitalisation with an extension makes an existing building a new one (Ra 2020/15/0001), and under the five-year limb giving the residence up well before the sale is not harmful, while a seller who intends to move must be allowed a reasonable period to establish the new home (Ro 2015/15/0006).

Austrian loss relief is narrow, and narrow in two different ways depending on the head the loss arose under.

EStG § 31 is the residual head and it is short. A speculative transaction is a disposal of a private asset where the income is not caught by § 27 or § 30 and not more than one year lies between acquisition and disposal. The income is proceeds less acquisition cost and income-related expenses, free of tax where the year's speculative income does not exceed EUR 440 in total, and an overall loss is not relievable at all. There is no special rate here. Physical gold, a watch, a painting and a car sit in this head, and after a year they leave the income tax net entirely.

Cryptocurrencies do not. EStG § 27 Abs. 4a puts them inside income from capital assets and EStG § 27b divides them into current income and realised increases in value. Staking, airdrops, bounties and a hardfork are expressly not current income: those units are taxed when later realised, at 27.5 percent, on the same moving-average cost as any other holding.

A corporation has no private assets, so § 30, § 30a and § 31 do not reach it as they reach an individual. A gain on a shareholding is part of the company's income and bears corporate income tax at 23 percent for calendar years from 2024 (KStG § 22 Abs. 1). One relief changes that in one direction only: KStG § 10 Abs. 3 leaves gains, losses and other changes in value of an internationale Schachtelbeteiligung out of account unless tax effectiveness was elected in the acquisition-year return, and an Austrian subsidiary is not an international participation, so that gain stays in the base. What that asymmetry means for a structure belongs with holding austria; how the disposal is recognised in the company's books belongs with austria accounting standards. Where at least 75 percent of the interests in a property-owning company pass, Grunderwerbsteuer is also triggered under GrEStG § 1 Abs. 3.

WTBG 2017 § 2 Abs. 1 reserves advice and assistance in tax law and accounting, bookkeeping including payroll, closing the books and representation before the tax authorities to a licensed Austrian Steuerberater. This is one of the two pages on this site where the line is easiest to cross, because nearly every question a seller asks is about their own position. So the page sets out what the statutes provide and what follows from them mechanically, and advises on nobody's position.

What we can tell you without reservation. Which of the three heads a disposal falls into, which paragraph sets each rate and each deadline, and which facts the answer turns on: the legal form, the size and history of the holding, where the seller is resident and when the asset was acquired.

What we hand to a licensed adviser. Any computation of a particular gain, the choice between the deemed and the actual acquisition cost, whether to elect ordinary assessment or the deferral on departure, the treaty position and the return. We will not tell you when to sell.

What we do alongside it. The corporate work the tax sits on: the company, the register filing that records a change of shareholder, the registered office, the tax number and the VAT number.

The reserved part goes to a licensed Austrian Steuerberater. Any computation of your own gain, the elections, the treaty position and the return are reserved by WTBG 2017 § 2 Abs. 1. We say so rather than answer it.

Company Registration Austria: Capital Gains Tax in Austria The corporate side is ours: the company, the share transfer and the register filing that records it, the registered office and the tax numbers. Ask about your Austrian position, or start your onboarding if you are ready.