How Austrian Court Fees Actually Add Up

Tarifpost 10 Z I of the Gerichtsgebührengesetz is the whole Firmenbuch tariff, split into three lettered heads. Read them in the right order and the arithmetic becomes mechanical.

1. The application fee (Eingabengebühr), litera a. Its heading reads "Gebühren für Eingaben, die auf eine Amtshandlung bei folgenden Rechtsträgern gerichtet sind": fees for filings directed at an official act at the entities then listed. The chargeable event is the filing, no entry is mentioned, and the rate turns on which kind of entity the filing concerns.

2. The registration fee (Eintragungsgebühr), litera b and litera c. Litera b is headed "Eintragungsgebühren für die Eintragung folgender Rechtsträger", registration fees for entering the entity itself, so it is charged once in a company's life. Litera c is a closed list of twelve later events, from a change of capital to a merger. Here the chargeable event is the entry.

One fee buys the court's attention, the other buys a line in the register, and they are counted by different rules because they count different things.

The application fee does not attach to the word application. The first of the annotations under the heading Zu Z I lit. a sets out a closed list of four things that carry it, and two of them surprise people.

• An application for entry in the Firmenbuch. The ordinary case.
• Any other proceeding-initiating application for an official act of the register court aimed at an entry, or at the appointment or removal of legal representatives, supervisory board members, auditors, foundation curators or liquidators. Asking the court to appoint a liquidator is a chargeable filing in its own right.
• Submissions under UGB §§ 277 to 281, the annual accounts filing. A company that changes nothing still lodges one chargeable filing a year: the annual accounts it has to file are an Eingabe like any other.
• A legal remedy in Firmenbuch matters. An appeal is a filing, at the same rate as the filing it attacks.

One exemption sits in the same block and it is narrow: "Eingaben des Revisionsverbands sind gebührenfrei", filings by the audit association are free of charge.

Each rule is one sentence. Together they produce arithmetic no fee list can show.

Rule 1. One application fee per filing, however many requests it carries. "Die Eingabengebühr ist nur einmal zu entrichten; dies gilt auch dann, wenn die Eingabe mehrere Anträge enthält." The fee is to be paid only once, and this applies also where the filing contains several applications (Anmerkungen zu Z I lit. a, Z 2). A filing that changes three things costs one application fee. Three filings cost three.

Rule 2. One registration fee per chargeable event. "Die Eintragungsgebühr nach Tarifpost 10 I lit. c ist bei Zutreffen mehrerer dort angeführter Tatbestände für jede einzelne der Eintragungen zu entrichten." Where several of the events listed there apply, the registration fee is payable for each individual entry (Anmerkungen zu Z I lit. b und c, Z 7). Note what it names: litera c only. Bundling changes into one filing saves the application fee. It saves nothing on the registration side.

Rule 3. The application fee is owed whatever the outcome. "Die Pflicht zur Entrichtung der Eingabengebühr wird vom Ausgang des Verfahrens nicht berührt; dies gilt auch dann, wenn die Eingabe zu keiner Eintragung im Firmenbuch geführt hat." The duty to pay is not affected by the outcome, and this applies also where the filing led to no entry in the register at all (Anmerkungen zu Z I lit. a, Z 4). You are not buying an entry.

Two qualifications belong beside them, and both are missed more often than the rules are.

Rule 2 stops at the reorganisation heads. "Die Eintragungsgebühr nach Tarifpost 10 I lit. c Z 2 bis 8 ist auch bei mehrfacher Eintragung ins Firmenbuch nur einmal zu entrichten, und zwar jeweils vom übernehmenden Rechtsträger oder vom Rechtsnachfolger": for lines Z 2 to Z 8 the registration fee is payable once even on multiple entries, by the acquiring entity or the legal successor, who are jointly and severally liable where there are several (Z 9 of the same annotations). A merger producing three register entries still carries one registration fee. A change of capital, a squeeze-out and an ordinary amendment of the articles fall outside that sentence, being Z 1, Z 9 and Z 10.

The rate is fixed by the legal form at the moment of lodging. The application fee "bestimmt sich nach der bei Einbringung der Eingabe bestehenden Rechtsform des Rechtsträgers; bei Anträgen zur erstmaligen Eintragung nach der beantragten Rechtsform des Rechtsträgers, dessen Eintragung begehrt wird" (Z 3). On a first registration there is no entity yet, so the rate follows the form applied for.

Open Tarifpost 10 and the registration of a GmbH costs 365 Euro. Nobody has paid that for years. The amount in the tariff column is the statutory base figure, and beside it sits a bracketed pointer to a footnote carrying the amount actually in force.

The mechanism is GGG § 31a. The Minister of Justice must re-set the fixed fees of the act and its tariff by ordinance as soon as and to the extent that the consumer price index has moved by more than 5 percent against the index number for March 2001, and thereafter against the number underlying the last re-setting. The new figures are computed in the ratio of those index numbers, and "die so berechneten Beträge über 15 Euro sind auf volle Eurobeträge kaufmännisch zu runden", rounded commercially to whole euros above 15 Euro and more finely below it. They take effect from the first day of the third month after publication of the final index number (GGG Art. 1 § 31a Abs. 1, in force from 30 July 2026).

Two such ordinances govern the current amounts: BGBl. II Nr. 51/2025 from 1 April 2025, and BGBl. II Nr. 227/2026 from 1 August 2026. So a fee has two lives in the same document, and reading only the tariff column understates every Firmenbuch fee by roughly a third.

The middle two columns are the point of the table. The left one quotes the tariff in its own words and its own format; the right one is the amount in force from 1 August 2026.

Nothing below is an estimate. Each line is a row of the table above, and each total is the sum of the lines printed beside it.

A GmbH changes its name and increases its capital, in one filing. The name sits in the articles, so it is litera c Z 10; the capital is litera c Z 1. Rule 1 charges the application fee once, rule 2 charges both registration lines. EUR 47 + EUR 70 + EUR 222 = EUR 339. Filed separately, rule 1 applies twice: EUR 47 + EUR 70, then EUR 47 + EUR 222, so EUR 386. The difference is exactly one application fee, and it is the only saving bundling produces.

A GmbH is registered for the first time. There is no company yet, so annotation Z 3 takes the rate from the form applied for: litera a Z 5 and litera b Z 5. EUR 47 + EUR 475 = EUR 522. Send the filing or any one of its documents on paper and annotation Z 1a adds EUR 24, so EUR 546.

A company seated outside the EU registers an Austrian branch. Litera a Z 12 and litera b Z 12. EUR 130 + EUR 780 = EUR 910, the same total an AG or an SE reaches by a different pair of lines. The branch itself is a foreign company's Austrian establishment.

And one bill with no registration fee at all. The annual accounts filing is an Eingabe under annotation Z 1 lit. c, so it carries EUR 47 for a GmbH, or EUR 71 where the company is small enough to file on paper under UGB § 277 Abs. 6 and does so. No registration line covers it, because litera b and litera c charge entries and an accounts submission is not one: a reading of a closed list rather than a sentence of the act, and stated as such.

Three questions, three paragraphs, and none of the answers is in the tariff.

1. It arises when the filing is handed in. The federal claim to an application fee is founded "bei Eingabengebühren mit der Überreichung der Eingabe" (GGG Art. 1 § 2 Z 2, in the version in force from 1 October 2026). Not on acceptance, not on entry. The paragraph closes with a residual clause for whatever it has not timed expressly, "bei allen sonstigen Amtshandlungen und Verfahren mit deren Beginn".

2. The person who lodges it owes it. For filings, the payer is "die einschreitende Partei", the party appearing (GGG Art. 1 § 7 Abs. 1 Z 2, in force from 1 October 2026). Where the same amount is owed by two or more people, "so sind sie zur ungeteilten Hand zahlungspflichtig", they are liable jointly and severally (Abs. 4).

3. On an electronic filing the court debits you, and you may not set a ceiling. Where a filing arrives through electronic legal communication, the fees that arise on lodging "sind ... durch Abbuchung und Einziehung zu entrichten; in diesem Fall darf ein höchstens abzubuchender Betrag nicht angegeben werden": they must be paid by direct debit, and a maximum amount to be debited may not be stated (GGG Art. 1 § 4 Abs. 4, in force from 19 April 2024). Since a Firmenbuch filing is normally made that way, the account is charged with what the court works out, not with what the filer budgeted.

Where the claim arises on the handing in of a filing and the fee is not paid, or not paid in full, or a direct debit fails, a surcharge is levied on top of the missing fee: EUR 30 from 1 August 2026 (GGG Art. 1 § 31 Abs. 1 with its Anm. 1, BGBl. II Nr. 227/2026).

The next sentence is the one worth reading twice. GGG § 7 Abs. 2 states the general position plainly: "Die Vertreter der Parteien sowie die sonstigen am Verfahren Beteiligten haften für die Gerichtsgebühren nicht, sofern nichts anderes gesetzlich festgelegt ist." Representatives of the parties and other participants are not liable for court fees, unless the law provides otherwise. Section 31 Abs. 2 is that exception: for the surcharge, "haften als Bürge und Zahler mit den zur Zahlung der Gebühr verpflichteten Personen die Bevollmächtigten und die gesetzlichen Vertreter, die den Schriftsatz, durch dessen Überreichung der Anspruch des Bundes auf die Gebühr begründet wird, verfaßt oder überreicht haben". The authorised representatives and legal representatives who drafted or lodged the pleading are liable as surety and payer alongside the person who owes the fee.

So the fee itself never reaches the representative and the penalty for getting it wrong always can. The one way out is about timing rather than excuses: the surcharge is not payable where payment was set in motion to the court's account by the day of lodging at the latest and the amount reaches the court within ten days of falling due (Abs. 3).

One statute removes the Firmenbuch fees outright rather than reducing them. NeuFöG § 1 Z 3 provides that "Gerichtsgebühren für die Eintragungen in das Fimenbuch (Tarifpost 10 Z I des Gerichtsgebührengesetzes) unmittelbar im Zusammenhang mit der Neugründung des Betriebes" are not levied (NeuFöG § 1, in force from 2 August 2011; the missing letter in Fimenbuch is in the published text). The tariff's own annotation extends it to the associated application fees, and allows the official form to arrive up to fourteen days after the application where the application expressly claims the exemption and declares that the form will follow (Anmerkungen zu Z I lit. b und c, Z 8).

What the waiver turns on is not the company but the business. NeuFöG § 2 sets five conditions and all of them must hold:

• A business is newly opened by creating a business structure that did not exist before, serving to earn income within EStG § 2 Abs. 3 Z 1 to Z 3.
• The person controlling it within two years of the founding "hat sich bisher nicht in vergleichbarer Art beherrschend betrieblich betätigt", has not previously been active in a comparable controlling way.
• "Es liegt keine bloße Änderung der Rechtsform in Bezug auf einen bereits vorhandenen Betrieb vor": it is not a mere change of legal form of a business that already exists.
• "Es liegt kein bloßer Wechsel in der Person des Betriebsinhabers in Bezug auf einen bereits vorhandenen Betrieb durch eine entgeltliche oder unentgeltliche Übertragung des Betriebes vor": nor a mere change in the person of the owner through a transfer of the business, paid or unpaid.
• The structure is not enlarged by existing businesses or parts of businesses in the month of the founding and the following eleven months.

The effects arise only "wenn der Betriebsinhaber bei den in Betracht kommenden Behörden einen amtlichen Vordruck vorlegt, in dem die Neugründung erklärt wird", on presenting an official form declaring the founding, and the form must be confirmed as drawn up with the advice of the statutory professional representation the owner belongs to (NeuFöG § 4 Abs. 1 and Abs. 3, in force from 1 January 2020). Abs. 4 allows the declaration to be made electronically instead.

Tarifpost 10 carries two independent annotation series and they collide. Anyone quoting it has to say which one they mean, and the short form everyone uses does not.

The first series is numbered 1, 1a and 2 to 23, grouped under headings inside the tariff: Zu Z I lit. a, Zu Z I lit. b und c, Zu Z II, Zu Z III and Zu Z IV. These are the rules. The second is a block of footnotes at the foot of the tariff, Anm. 1 to Anm. 21, and these are nothing but indexed amounts.

They overlap on almost every number that matters. In the rules series, number 2 is the one-fee-per-filing sentence, number 4 is the whatever-the-outcome sentence and number 7 is the per-chargeable-event sentence. In the footnote series, Anm. 2 is EUR 47, Anm. 4 is EUR 66 and Anm. 7 is EUR 169. A citation reading Tarifpost 10 Anm. 4 therefore points at a rule and at an amount at once, and a reader cannot tell which.

This site cites the rules by their heading, as Anmerkungen zu Z I lit. a, Z 4, and the amounts as Anm. followed by the number. Both forms are used above and neither is ambiguous.

Two gaps are worth naming, because the honest answer is more useful than a confident one.

The registration fee where nothing is ever entered. GGG § 30 Abs. 1 is the general rule: "Ist in diesem Bundesgesetz nichts anderes bestimmt, erlischt die Gebührenpflicht, wenn sie durch eine nachfolgende Entscheidung berührt wird", unless the act provides otherwise, the fee liability lapses where a subsequent decision affects it (GGG Art. 1 § 30, in force from 1 July 2015). Annotation Z 4 is exactly that otherwise for the application fee, and no equivalent sentence was found for litera b or litera c. Reading those two heads as charging entries, a head that never occurs cannot be met: a reading, not a sentence of the act, so this page states no rule about it. The fee question a returned filing raises is answered on what happens when the register court sends a filing back.

No timing for the registration fee. Section 2 times the application fee expressly and times entries in the public books and the ship register, and names the Firmenbuch registration fee in none of its heads. Whether the residual clause in Z 9 carries it is not something the paragraph answers.

And no processing time appears here, because no Austrian statute sets one for a Firmenbuch entry. A fee is fixed by law. A date is not.

• The Gerichtsgebührengesetz, at source on 18 September 2026: Art. 1 § 2 and § 7 in the versions in force from 1 October 2026, § 4, § 30, § 31, § 31a, and § 32 with the whole Tarif.
• Tarifpost 10 Z I inside Art. 1 § 32: litera a, litera b and litera c with their rates, and both annotation series in full.
• The Neugründungs-Förderungsgesetz, §§ 1, 2 and 4.
• Nothing from a fee list, a calculator or a commentary. Where a conclusion is a reading of the statute rather than a sentence of it, the page says so in the same breath.

The change itself, not the fee. Company Registration Austria: Company Amendments in Austria sets out what each registrable change needs, in what form, and what goes to the court.

The register these fees buy a line in. How to search the Firmenbuch and read an extract covers the query fees, which sit in a different part of the same tariff post.

A reorganisation, where the once-only rule bites. How an Austrian company reorganisation is taxed takes the merger, demerger and conversion procedures on their own terms.