CRA Contact →

Austria · Guide

Austrian Company Guides
Twenty Provisions Read at Source

Twenty articles, each built on a paragraph of Austrian law rather than on a summary of it. Every one develops something the main guides state in a single clause, and every figure in them carries its paragraph, its Bundesgesetzblatt reference and the date that version took effect.

Updated 18 September 2026. The series goes out one article a week; the table below lists the articles already published, and each new one is added the week it appears.

These twenty pages exist because the guides they support have to stop somewhere. A guide to the corporate tax rate cannot also be a guide to the participation exemption, and a guide to the company register cannot also be a guide to what happens when a filing comes back. Each article below takes one provision that a guide mentions in a clause and reads it properly: what it says, what it does not say, what it costs and where it stops. Where a question is about your own position rather than about the law, the article says so and stops, because Austrian law reserves that answer to a licensed adviser.

  • What these twenty pages are
  • The twenty, and the provision each one reads
  • Company formation and corporate changes
  • Company forms
  • Tax and reporting
  • VAT
  • Registers and the registered office
  • Licensing and intellectual property
  • Immigration
  • Where to start
Red leather bound volumes of nineteenth-century official reports on a shelf.

What these twenty pages are

Three things are true of every article on this page, and they are what separates them from the material that ranks around them.

The provision is read, not summarised. Each article was written against the consolidated text of the act, fetched from the Federal Chancellery's open data service, and every figure carries the paragraph it comes from, the gazette number of the amending act and the date that version entered into force. A date is part of the citation here rather than an afterthought, because several of these provisions changed in 2026.

The German is quoted where the German is the point. A statutory phrase that decides an outcome is given in the original with the paragraph beside it, because a translation of a term of art is an interpretation and the reader is entitled to see which one they are being offered.

The article stops where the law stops. Several of these subjects have no settled answer: a register court has a discretion, a period has never been tested, an ordinance points at a category nobody has litigated. The article says so rather than filling the gap with a confident sentence.

The twenty, and the provision each one reads

The middle column is the point of the page. It is the provision the article is built on, and it is the reason the article exists separately from the guide it supports.

ArticleThe provision it readsThe page it supports
Is Austria a high-tax country for a company?KStG § 22 and § 24, with the 2028 progressionCorporate tax
The Austria to United States tax treatythe convention's residence, dividend and limitation articlesWithholding tax
Patents, and how they differ from a trade markPatG § 1 and § 80, against GMG § 1Trade mark registration
Tax in Austria for a foreignerEStG § 1 and § 98, with BAO § 26Income tax
Austria against the other EU routesKStG § 10, NAG § 41 and AuslBG § 24Company types
When the register court sends a filing backFBG § 17, the VerbesserungThe company register
The two nine-month rules in reorganisationAktG § 220 Abs. 3 against UmgrStG § 13 Abs. 1Company restructuring

The twenty articles, the provision each is built on, and the page it supports. Consolidated texts read through the Federal Chancellery's open data service at ogd.ris.bka.gv.at, September 2026.

Where the twenty sit

Twenty articles · seven subject areas

  1. Company formation and corporate changes4 of 20
  2. Company forms3 of 20
    • Capital in something other than money
    • The participation exemption
    • The FlexCo two years on
  3. Tax and reporting7 of 20
  4. VAT1 of 20
    • Which rate applies when two could
  5. Registers and the registered office3 of 20
  6. Licensing and intellectual property1 of 20
  7. Immigration1 of 20
    • No digital nomad visa
Twenty articles across seven subject areas. The distribution follows the law rather than the plan: tax and the register carry the most provisions that reward being read in full.

Company formation and corporate changes

Four articles sit behind the formation silo, and three of them are about what happens after the company exists rather than before.

Company forms

    Tax and reporting

    Seven articles, the largest group on this page, because this is where Austrian law rewards being read in full rather than summarised.

    VAT

      Registers and the registered office

      Licensing and intellectual property

      Immigration

        Where to start

        If you know which provision you need, the table above is the fastest way in. If you are still deciding what to set up, start with the company types guide, which compares the Austrian forms side by side, or with company formation in Austria for the process as a whole.

        If a question here turns on your own circumstances rather than on what the law provides, none of these pages can answer it, and none of them tries. Ask us and we will tell you what the law requires and who is authorised to advise on the rest. If you have already decided and want to begin, the onboarding questionnaire is the next step.