Corporate Tax
in Austria

One rate, charged on the company and not on its owner. Each rate carries the paragraph that sets it and the years it covers, because the years are what most published figures leave out.

There is no local or municipal corporate income tax anywhere in Austria, and the same 23 percent reaches a limited taxpayer under KStG § 21. The 2028 bracket is in the next section rather than the table above, because it is not yet in force.

There is a floor. KStG § 24 Abs. 4 Z 1 charges 5 percent of one quarter of the statutory minimum share or nominal capital for every full calendar quarter of unlimited corporate tax liability. For a GmbH: EUR 10,000 divided by 4 is EUR 2,500, and 5 percent of EUR 2,500 is EUR 125.

1. It starts in the first quarter, at the full amount. KStG § 24 Abs. 4 Z 3 once reduced it for new companies. The consolidated text now annotates Z 3 as repealed by BGBl. I Nr. 200/2023, from 2024. There is no first-years discount.

2. A dormant company owes it anyway. The trigger is unlimited tax liability for a full quarter, not turnover, profit or activity. That is the real cost of keeping a company alive, whether you buy shelf company austria or dissolve company austria.

3. It is credited, never refunded. KStG § 24 Abs. 4 Z 4 credits the excess like an EStG § 45 advance payment, capped each later year by the excess of that year's actual tax over that year's minimum. The provision sets no time limit.

Two taxes sit in series on a distributed profit, and no statute states the combination. The company pays corporate income tax; the shareholder pays capital yields tax on what is distributed.

This is a calculation from two statutory rates, and no Austrian statute states 44.175 percent. It assumes an Austrian-resident individual shareholder, no double tax treaty and no election to be assessed at the ordinary tariff. On the part of a 2028 profit above EUR 1,000,000 the same arithmetic gives 44.90 percent. Who withholds, when, and how treaty relief is claimed are on the withholding tax guide; what the shareholder pays on other income is on how much income tax you pay in Austria.

The base is the income of the corporation (KStG § 7 Abs. 2), or the total income of a limited taxpayer under KStG § 21. A GmbH, a FlexCo and an AG fall under KStG § 7 Abs. 3 and compute all income as business income.

Profit determination, and whether the accounts must be audited, sit on when an Austrian company needs a statutory audit. A shareholder's gain on selling the shares is a different tax on a different page: austria capital gains tax for non residents, as is a transfer on death or by gift: Company Registration Austria: Inheritance and Gift Tax in Austria.

An Austrian loss carry-forward is not a free pass. KStG § 8 Abs. 4 Z 2 lit. a, in the version in force from 30 July 2026, allows the loss deduction only up to 75 percent of the total amount of income, and the rest is carried into later years under the same limit. The provision fixes a yearly percentage and states no expiry, which is not the same as unlimited.

So a company sitting on a large carry-forward still pays tax on at least 25 percent of its income in a profitable year, which is exactly when the minimum-tax credit from the loss years becomes usable. The cap does not apply, under lit. b, to the extent the income contains:

• gains from a debt waiver, in particular restructuring gains under KStG § 23a;
• gains arising in assessment periods affected by insolvency proceedings;
• gains from disposing of or giving up businesses and sub-businesses;
• gains on co-entrepreneur interests;
• liquidation gains under KStG § 19;
• recaptured amounts under KStG § 9 Abs. 6 Z 7, EStG § 2 Abs. 8 Z 4 or EStG § 6 Z 6.

Mantelkauf, the shell purchase, removes the carry-forward altogether. Under lit. c it bites from the point at which the taxpayer's identity is, on an overall view, economically no longer given, through a substantial change of the organisational and economic structure together with a substantial change of the shareholder structure on a paid basis. Two qualifications sit in the same provision: it spares changes made to preserve a substantial part of the jobs, and losses survive to the extent hidden reserves are realised effectively for tax by the end of that fiscal year. For a buyer that means Mantelkauf is a risk of buying a used company; a genuine Vorratsgesellschaft has never traded, so it has no carry-forward to lose. Reorganisations triggering the lit. b carve-outs belong with company restructuring in austria.

Gruppenbesteuerung pools the tax results of linked companies so that one member's loss meets another's profit. KStG § 9 sets the conditions, and they are conditions rather than preferences: miss one and there is no group.

The branch requirement is a registration, not a formality: austria company register explains the Firmenbuch entry, and the structure itself is on austrian holding company. Whether a group beats a plain austrian subsidiary in a given case is for a licensed Austrian Steuerberater, not a web page.

Corporate income tax is assessed after the end of the calendar year, on the income of that period (KStG § 24 Abs. 1). Everything below runs against the company's tax account, which the tax office opens when it assigns the austrian tax identification number. Three filing routes carry three different dates, which is why the question gets three different answers online.

Electronic filing is not optional. KStG § 24 Abs. 3 Z 1 requires an unlimitedly liable taxpayer to transmit the return electronically and allows paper only where that is unreasonable for want of technical means, so the end-of-June date is the operative one for a GmbH, FlexCo or AG. The quota scheme is not a longer deadline a company can simply take: it runs through a professional representative holding a power of attorney.

Corporate income tax is not the whole bill, and most of what follows starts the moment the company hires. Each row names the charge, the paragraph and who collects it; the depth is on the payroll guide.

On the chamber levies, and the gap in that table. Membership of the Wirtschaftskammer follows automatically from a trade licence; a company does not opt into it. KU 1 is charged on a base built from input VAT and self-assessed to the tax office competent for VAT; KU 2 is technically the surcharge to the Dienstgeberbeitrag, on the same wage base; the Grundumlage funds the trade groups. Rates were cut Austria-wide from 1 January 2024 and KU 2 is set by each of the nine provincial chambers. This page prints no applicable percentage for them, because the figures in circulation are chamber self-publications, not statute. The statutory ceiling is a different matter and is published here, because it is in the act: WKG 1998 § 122 Abs. 8 lets a provincial chamber levy a further contribution on the Dienstgeberbeitrag base but says it darf 0,29 vH der Beitragsgrundlage nicht übersteigen. So whatever a provincial chamber sets, KU 2 cannot exceed 0.29 percent of the wage base (WKG 1998 § 122 Abs. 8). That ceiling is the number worth planning against, and it is the one the chamber publications do not lead with.

Two things are short on purpose. Pillar Two, the global minimum tax, reaches groups above EUR 750 million of consolidated revenue, outside this page's audience. And no total employer on-cost percentage appears, because only the 3 percent and the 3.7 percent above are fixed in law.

Not all of this work may lawfully be done by anyone. Under WTBG 2017 § 2 Abs. 1, advice and assistance in tax law and accounting, bookkeeping including payroll, closing the books and representation before the tax authorities are reserved to a licensed Austrian Steuerberater. So this page sets out what the law provides and what follows from it mechanically, and advises on no reader's position. Bookkeeping itself is on bookkeeping austria.

What a first year of dates looks like. Four advance-payment dates, an electronic filing deadline in the June after the year ends, and a quota-scheme date nine months later that only a professional representative can reach.

Why the minimum tax surprises owners of dormant companies. It is triggered by unlimited tax liability for a full quarter, has run at the full amount since the 2024 repeal, and returns only as a credit in a profitable year.

What a foreign parent fixes before signing a group application. A Firmenbuch-registered branch holding the participations, signatures from every included company before its fiscal year ends, a tax-allocation agreement, and a three-year commitment whose breach reopens the assessments.

Reserved work goes to a licensed Austrian Steuerberater. Read what an Austrian tax adviser actually does for a foreign owner before deciding what to hand over.

Or ask the question first. Send the legal form, the fiscal year and the shareholding: ask about your Austrian company, or start your onboarding if you are ready to engage.