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.
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
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.
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
- Company formation and corporate changes4 of 20
- Company forms3 of 20
- Tax and reporting7 of 20
- VAT1 of 20
- Registers and the registered office3 of 20
- Licensing and intellectual property1 of 20
- Immigration1 of 20
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.
- Austria against the other EU routes into the single market compares the Austrian route with Estonia, Ireland, the Netherlands and Germany on the provisions that actually differ, including where Austria loses.
- The two nine-month rules in Austrian reorganisation separates the age limit on a closing balance sheet from the filing deadline that looks like it. They are different provisions in different acts and confusing them is the commonest error in this area.
- How Austrian court fees actually add up explains why one filing can carry one application fee and several registration fees, and why the fee is owed whatever the court decides.
- Leaving an Austrian company dormant sets out what still falls due when a company trades nothing: the minimum corporate tax, the accounts, the register and the beneficial-owner filing.
Company forms
- Paying share capital in something other than money covers the contribution in kind, the valuation the register wants to see, and why the court treats it differently from cash.
- The participation exemption, and the holding periods that govern it separates the exemption for a dividend, which has no threshold and no holding period, from the one tenth held for a year, which governs the gain.
- The FlexCo two years on looks at what the 2024 form actually changed, including the enterprise-value share and the transfer form, and at the larger part that did not change at all.
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.
- Is Austria a high-tax country for a company? answers the comparison question with the rate, the minimum tax and the progression that arrives in 2028.
- Tax in Austria for a foreigner is a router: six situations, each with the provision that decides it, so a reader can find which one they are in before reading anything else.
- The Austria to United States tax treaty, for a founder reads the articles an owner-manager actually meets, including the residence tie-breaker and the limitation on benefits.
- Six bars on relief at source, not four counts the bars in the ordinance itself, which is more than the common summaries carry, and explains the refund route that remains.
- Keeping the books outside Austria covers the 2026 version of the rule: the books may be kept abroad, and certain original records still may not leave.
- Four authorisations, and who may lawfully keep your books sets out the four tiers of Austrian authorisation, what each may do, and the provision that makes offering the work an offence in itself.
- The hardest deadline in Austrian employment is the filing that falls before the first hour is worked, with the catch-up that repairs the form and not the timing, and the two separate penalties that follow.
VAT
- Which Austrian VAT rate applies when two could works through the order of the subpositions in the rate provision, including the rate that almost nobody prints.
Registers and the registered office
- What happens when the register court sends a filing back explains the order to remedy, and the rule that a cured filing counts from the day it first arrived.
- Why the register refuses a company name covers distinctiveness, the mandatory legal-form suffix, the chamber's opinion and what a refusal costs.
- What a nominee owes personally under the beneficial-owner regime sets out the duties the regime places on the nominee rather than on the company.
Licensing and intellectual property
- Patents in Austria, and how they differ from a trade mark covers what is patentable, what the utility model does instead, and why the two rights are not alternatives.
Immigration
- Austria has no digital nomad visa, and what that leaves opens the seven closed lists that decide the question, five of which no page on this site had read, and works through what each one does and does not admit.
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.