Tax in Austria for a Foreigner
Six Situations, Six Provisions

"Tax in Austria for a foreigner" is asked by six people with almost nothing in common. A shareholder who has never drawn a cent out of an Austrian GmbH, a founder who has just voted the first distribution, a director paid from Vienna while living abroad, a couple who bought a flat in Tyrol and use it in winter, a landlord who has never seen the building, and someone about to sell a company they built.

EStG § 1 sorts them in two sentences, and nothing in either turns on nationality, on a residence permit or on where a company is registered.

EStG § 98 Abs. 1 opens with the word the whole article turns on: limited liability reaches nur die folgenden Einkünfte, only the following income. Seven entries follow, and an eighth was repealed by BGBl. I Nr. 111/2010. Income matching none of them is not taxed by Austria at all.

The same catalogue governs a corporate owner: KStG § 21 Abs. 1 Z 1 extends the liability of a company with neither its management nor its seat here nur auf Einkünfte im Sinne des § 98, and switches off the participation exemption in KStG §§ 10 and 10a outside an Austrian permanent establishment.

No entry reaches a holding. They reach what a holding produces: a distribution under Z 5 lit. a and a disposal under Z 5 lit. e. A shareholder who has resolved neither has, on the face of the statute, no Austrian income, and EStG § 102 has nothing to assess.

The company is a different taxpayer and its position is the opposite. KStG § 1 Abs. 2 makes a corporation unlimitedly liable where it has its management or its seat in Austria, and a company entered in the Firmenbuch has its seat here whatever its owners do. It owes corporate income tax on its profit and minimum corporate income tax in a quarter with no profit at all, both with their paragraphs in the corporate tax guide.

A resolved distribution moves the shareholder from nothing to something. EStG § 98 Abs. 1 Z 5 lit. a catches income from the letting of capital within § 27 Abs. 2 Z 1 where the withholding agent is the debtor of the yields (§ 95 Abs. 2 Z 1 lit. a) and capital yields tax was to be withheld. On an ordinary distribution the debtor is the company itself, so the entry is met by the structure of the payment rather than by anything the shareholder does.

The rate is 27.5 percent (EStG § 27a Abs. 1 Z 2), and for a natural person EStG § 97 Abs. 1 treats the income tax as discharged by that deduction, so nothing further is filed unless one of the paragraph's two options is used. A corporate shareholder runs on another track: the exemption in EStG § 94 Z 2 and the repayment in KStG § 21 Abs. 1 Z 1a are in the withholding tax guide, and the structure built on them is on austrian holding company.

This is the situation with two answers, and the shareholding picks between them. Above 25 percent of the share or nominal capital, EStG § 22 Z 2 makes a director's remuneration income from self-employed work; at 25 percent or less, EStG § 25 Abs. 1 Z 1 lit. b puts it back into employment income. That line is on the income tax guide.

For a non-resident the same line decides which entry applies: self-employed remuneration goes to Z 2, employment income to Z 4. Both ask whether the work was exercised or exploited in Austria, and the statute answers that inside Z 2. Exercised means wenn der Steuerpflichtige im Inland persönlich tätig geworden ist, that the taxpayer has been personally active here. Exploited means the work is not personally exercised here aber ihr wirtschaftlicher Erfolg der inländischen Volkswirtschaft unmittelbar zu dienen bestimmt ist, but its economic success is intended to serve the Austrian economy directly. Geography alone therefore does not put a director outside the entry.

What follows is mechanical. Under Z 4, EStG § 70 makes the employee limitedly liable to wage tax and computes it without the Familienbonus Plus or the sole-earner and single-parent credits. Under Z 2 nothing is deducted, because no entry of EStG § 99 Abs. 1 reaches a managing director's own pay, so the tax arrives by assessment under EStG § 102 Abs. 1 Z 1. The contribution side has no residence condition at all: the SVS guide.

This is the only one of the six that changes the answer to the other five, because it moves a person off the closed list and onto worldwide income. It also has the lowest threshold.

BAO § 26 Abs. 1 gives a person a Wohnsitz where they have a dwelling at their disposal in circumstances suggesting they will keep it and use it. Ownership, a lease and a registration are evidence; none is the test, and the paragraph sets no minimum number of nights. Abs. 2 adds the habitual abode and hardens it: where a tax rule attaches unlimited liability to habitual abode, that liability always arises once a stay lasts longer than six months, and it then covers the first six months too.

One instrument narrows the dwelling limb. § 1 Abs. 1 of the second-home ordinance, BGBl. II Nr. 528/2003, provides that where a taxpayer's centre of vital interests has been abroad for more than five calendar years, an Austrian dwelling creates a Wohnsitz only in a year in which it is used, alone or with other Austrian dwellings, on more than 70 days, and Abs. 2 applies that only where a record of the days of use is kept. Beside it, § 3 makes use of the Austrian dwelling of an unlimitedly liable spouse or partner, from whom the taxpayer is not permanently separated, a Wohnsitz leading to unlimited liability.

Rent is the entry most often missed, because nothing arrives to announce it. EStG § 98 Abs. 1 Z 6 brings income from letting and leasing within § 28 into limited liability where the immovable property or the objects are in Austria, where the rights are entered in an Austrian public book or register, or where they are exploited in an Austrian permanent establishment.

Nothing is withheld on it, so EStG § 102 Abs. 1 Z 1 puts it to assessment, and the thresholds and dates are on the income tax guide. One boundary is worth naming: Z 6 is the letting, the sale is Z 7, and because Abs. 4 applies EStG §§ 30a to 30c to Z 1 to Z 3 and Z 7 only, the property regime's special rate and self-assessment never reach rent. The sale is on the capital gains tax guide; being assessed at all means being registered, which is the tax number guide.

EStG § 98 Abs. 1 Z 5 lit. e reaches a realised increase in value so far as it comes from disposing of a holding in a corporation with its seat or its management in Austria in which the taxpayer, or their predecessor on a gratuitous acquisition, held at least 1 percent within the last five calendar years. The test looks backwards, so a holding reduced shortly before a sale is still measured against what it was.

Nothing is deducted at source, because EStG § 94 Z 13 takes the case out of the withholding, which leaves an assessment. The rate, the computation, the position of a seller who never reached 1 percent and what happens on emigration are in the capital gains tax guide.

It classifies. It does not tell any reader which of the six they are in, and that is a legal position rather than a house style.

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. § 124 Abs. 1 Z 1 makes it an administrative offence carrying a fine of up to EUR 20,000 to do that work, or merely to anbietet it, to offer it, without the authorisation. Offering the answer is the offence, whether or not anyone takes it up, so a page that worked out which entry of EStG § 98 reaches a named reader would be doing the reserved act in public.

What is left is worth having: the situations exist in the statute whether or not anyone is standing in them, and the boundary between them is drawn by facts a reader already knows about themselves. That is where a conversation with a licensed adviser usefully starts. The company work around all of it is not reserved, and it is what this firm does.

Read at source on 18 September 2026, at the consolidated texts the Bundeskanzleramt publishes as open data, one document per paragraph and per version. No provision appears here without the paragraph that sets it.

• Einkommensteuergesetz 1988 (10004570): § 1 and § 98 are the spine; § 70, § 97 and § 102 are linked; § 22 Z 2, § 25, § 27, § 27a, § 28, § 30, § 94 and § 99 are cited in the text.
• Inländische Zweitwohnsitze, BGBl. II Nr. 528/2003 (20003027): § 1 and § 3, out of an ordinance four paragraphs long.
• Bundesabgabenordnung (10003940) § 26, § 27, § 240 and § 240a; Körperschaftsteuergesetz 1988 (10004569) § 1 and § 21; Wirtschaftstreuhandberufsgesetz 2017 (20009983) § 2 Abs. 1 and § 124 Abs. 1 Z 1.
• Verwaltungsgerichtshof, Ra 2020/13/0089 of 23 April 2021, the three routes to treaty relief.

The tax answer belongs to a licensed Austrian Steuerberater. Which situation applies, and what has to be filed, are reserved by WTBG 2017 § 2 Abs. 1.

Company Registration Austria: Income Tax in Austria The tariff, the filing thresholds and the rules for a limited taxpayer are on the income tax guide. For the company itself, ask about the Austrian company or start your onboarding.