Payroll in Austria
What an Employer Must Do, and by When

Lohnverrechnung is the monthly exercise of working out, for each employee, what the company withholds, what it owes on top, and what it reports. Three institutions receive the result, each with its own deadline and its own statute: the health insurance carrier, the tax office and the municipality.

The word carries more weight in Austria than elsewhere, because the legislator uses it. Payroll is a reserved activity: three of four regulated professions may perform it, one may not, and offering it without the authorisation is an administrative offence carrying a fine of up to EUR 20,000 (WTBG 2017 § 124 Abs. 1 Z 1). So this page explains the duty and never offers to discharge it.

Two neighbours belong elsewhere: insurance for a self-employed person, including a shareholder appointed managing director, which runs under the GSVG with the SVS, and how employment income is taxed in the employee's hands across the year.

Austrian law asks the question twice, once for insurance and once for wage tax, and links the answers on purpose. ASVG § 4 Abs. 2 defines a Dienstnehmer as someone employed for remuneration "in einem Verhältnis persönlicher und wirtschaftlicher Abhängigkeit", in personal and economic dependency, and extends that to anyone in whose engagement the marks of dependency outweigh the marks of self-employment. It then adds that anyone subject to wage tax under EStG § 47 counts in any event. A person is rarely an employee for one and not the other, which is the trap in engaging somebody as a contractor.

They come from different provisions and different authorities, and one unregistered worker can attract both.

A contribution surcharge, for being found out. ASVG § 113 Abs. 1 allows a Beitragszuschlag after an on-site detection where the registration was not filed before work started. Abs. 2 sets two flat parts: EUR 400 for each person not registered in time, for the separate processing, and EUR 600 for the inspection, the second charged only where one of the named inspection services made the detection. On a first late registration with insignificant consequences the EUR 400 part may be dropped and the EUR 600 part reduced to EUR 300 (Abs. 3).

An administrative fine, for the breach itself. ASVG § 111 Abs. 1 Z 1 makes it an offence to file the registration late, not at all, or wrongly. Abs. 2 puts the fine at EUR 730 to EUR 2,180, and on repetition at EUR 2,180 to EUR 5,000, reducible to EUR 365 on a first offence with slight fault.

Late payment is separate again. Contributions not paid within 15 days of falling due carry default interest, and a payment within a further three days has no consequences (§ 59 Abs. 1). The rate is a formula, so no interest percentage appears on this site: the base rate behind it has not been read at source.

The contribution period is the calendar month, taken uniformly as 30 days (ASVG § 44 Abs. 2). Four filings and payments hang off it, and three of the four fall on the 15th.

One rule catches a payroll that runs in arrears: pay regularly made by the 15th of a month for the month before is attributed to the earlier month, in the wage tax act (EStG § 79 Abs. 1) and in the municipal tax act (KommStG § 11 Abs. 1) alike. Pay for the previous year made between 16 January and 15 February is dealt with by 15 February under both.

Every rate below is fixed in a federal statute and cited to its paragraph. What the table does not do is total them into one on-cost percentage without qualification: the first five are capped at the maximum contribution base and the rest are not.

Below the ceiling the rates federal statute fixes as a number add to 29.06 percent of the relevant base. That total is arithmetic, not a rate in any provision, and it leaves out three things: the chamber surcharge, set provincially under the 0.29 percent cap; any ordinance rate now applying to the insolvency surcharge instead of the statutory 0.45 percent; and the separate employer levy payable in Vienna, which is provincial law this site has not read. Above the ceiling only the four uncapped rows keep running.

The base for social insurance is the Arbeitsverdienst due in the contribution period, rounded to the cent, excluding special payments (ASVG § 44 Abs. 1 Z 1, by reference to Entgelt in § 49). It is what is due, not what happened to be paid, so an underpayment does not reduce the contribution.

§ 45 Abs. 1 caps the daily average of the base at the maximum published for the year under § 108 Abs. 1 and 3, and counts a full calendar month as 30 days. For 2026 the daily maximum is EUR 231.00, so the monthly ceiling is EUR 6,930.00. Somebody holding two insurable jobs at once has the ceiling applied in each employment separately (§ 45 Abs. 2), which surprises employers who assume one aggregate limit.

The 13th and 14th monthly payments sit outside that base and have a ceiling of their own. Special payments within § 49 Abs. 2 bear contributions at the same percentages as ordinary pay, and those falling due in a calendar year count up to 60 times the daily maximum (§ 54 Abs. 1), which is EUR 13,860.00 for 2026; employer and employee split them as they split the rest (§ 54 Abs. 3).

Free service contracts are the exception. Their monthly ceiling is 35 times the daily maximum where no special payments are received and 30 times where they are (§ 45 Abs. 3), because a contract with no 13th salary would otherwise lose the benefit of the annual band.

• A wage account for every employee, opened no later than the 15th day of the month after the employment starts, carrying what EStG § 76 Abs. 1 lists: name, social insurance number, address and the allowances claimed with the details of the family members they rest on.
• A payslip every month, handed over or made available electronically no later than with the wage payment, showing gross pay, the base for compulsory contributions, the contributions, the wage tax base and the provision fund base and contribution (EStG § 78 Abs. 5).
• Withholding at every wage payment (§ 78 Abs. 1). Where the funds do not cover the agreed wage, the tax is computed on the lower amount actually paid (§ 78 Abs. 3).
• A Lohnzettel for every employee employed in the calendar year, transmitted unprompted and electronically by the end of February of the following year, or on the official form by the end of January where electronic transmission is genuinely not possible (EStG § 84 Abs. 1 Z 1 and Z 2).
• One audit covers all of it. The gemeinsame Prüfung aller lohnabhängigen Abgaben examines wage tax, the employer contribution and its chamber surcharge together, carried out by the payroll levies inspection service under the PLABG, BGBl. I Nr. 98/2018 (EStG § 86 Abs. 1).

The liability sits on the company, not on whoever does the arithmetic. The employer is liable to the federal government for withholding and remitting the wage tax (EStG § 82), and where a due payment is simply not made the tax office may estimate the arrears and hold the employer liable for its estimate (§ 79 Abs. 3). On the insurance side the employer owes both shares and pays the whole at their own risk and cost (ASVG § 58 Abs. 2). Engaging somebody to run the payroll moves none of that.

This is the case most foreign companies are in, and the statute treats it differently in four places.

Wage tax becomes optional, and the alternative is a filing. EStG § 47 Abs. 1 collects the tax on employment income by deduction where the employer has an Austrian permanent establishment within § 81. Where there is none, lit. b says wage tax may be collected by deduction, and if the employer does remit it, the employer takes on the duties of §§ 76 to 79, § 84 and § 87. If it does not, lit. c requires a Lohnbescheinigung under § 84a for an unlimitedly taxable employee whose centre of activity is in Austria for more than six months in the calendar year. There is no third option in which nothing is filed.

Municipal tax needs an establishment. KommStG 1993 § 1 charges the tax on wages granted to the employees of a permanent establishment of the business situated in Austria. No establishment, no municipal tax.

The employer contribution does not. FLAG 1967 § 41 Abs. 1 makes every employer who employs employees in the federal territory liable, and treats an employee posted abroad as still employed here. The test is where the work is, not where the employer is.

Nor does social insurance. ASVG § 33 Abs. 1 imposes the registration duty on Dienstgeber without qualification. What this page does not decide is which country's legislation applies to somebody working in more than one member state: that is settled by the coordination rules and the institutions applying them, on facts a web page does not have.

Two professional acts answer this, and the answer is finer than "you need an accountant". The operative word in both is vorbehalten, reserved. Each separates a reserved list, which creates a monopoly, from a list of things the holder is additionally entitled to do, which does not.

The line between the second and third rows is one deleted phrase. BiBuG § 2 Abs. 1 Z 1 reserves to the Bilanzbuchhalter "die pagatorische Buchhaltung (Geschäftsbuchhaltung) einschließlich der Lohnverrechnung und der Erstellung der Saldenlisten für Betriebe". BiBuG § 3 Abs. 1 Z 1 is the same sentence for the Buchhalter with those three words removed. A bookkeeper who may lawfully keep the company's books may not lawfully run its payroll, and the difference is legible in the text rather than inferred from it.

The fourth row is a profession built around payroll and nothing else. BiBuG § 4 Abs. 1 reserves to the Personalverrechner "die Lohnverrechnung" (Z 1) and representation in matters of payroll and payroll-related levies, "jedoch nicht die Vertretung im Rahmen der gemeinsamen Prüfung aller lohnabhängigen Abgaben und nicht die Vertretung im Rechtsmittelverfahren" (Z 2). Those two exclusions are the practical limit: the joint audit above is the proceeding in which an employer most wants representation.

Offering any of it without the authorisation is itself the offence. WTBG 2017 § 124 Abs. 1 Z 1 punishes with a fine of up to EUR 20,000 anyone who offers "eine der in §§ 2 und 3 angeführten Tätigkeiten ... ohne die erforderliche Berechtigung zu besitzen". Anbietet is the load-bearing word: the advertisement is the conduct, whether or not anyone is ever engaged.

It does not offer payroll. We do not run payroll, register employees, file contribution bases or wage tax returns, or act for anybody before the health insurance carrier, the tax office or a municipality: Austrian law reserves that work, and offering a reserved activity is itself the offence (WTBG 2017 § 124 Abs. 1 Z 1). What we do is form Austrian companies, provide the registered office and run the corporate administration. Tell us what the company will do and who will do it, and we will answer the company questions and leave the payroll to somebody entitled to take it on.

It also does not apply any of this to a reader's own position, which is reserved to a licensed Steuerberater (WTBG 2017 § 2 Abs. 1). Two further gaps are deliberate: no default interest percentage, and no processing times, because no official figure for either exists in a form this site has read.

• ASVG, Gesetzesnummer 10008147, BGBl. Nr. 189/1955, read as open data published by the Federal Chancellery: § 4, § 5 Abs. 2, § 33 and § 34, § 41, § 44 and § 45, § 49, § 51, § 54, § 58 and § 59, § 111 and § 113.
• EStG 1988, 10004570, BGBl. Nr. 400/1988: § 22 Z 2, § 47, § 76, § 78, § 79, § 82, § 84 and § 84a, and § 86 with the PLABG, BGBl. I Nr. 98/2018.
• FLAG 1967, 10008220, § 41 and § 43; KommStG 1993, 10004841, § 1, § 2, § 9 and § 11; WKG 1998, 10007962, § 122; AMPFG, 10008903, § 2; IESG, 10008418, § 12; BMSVG, 20002088, § 6.
• WTBG 2017, 20009983, § 2, § 4 and § 124; BiBuG 2014, 20008571, § 2, § 3 and § 4.
• *Beitragsrechtliche Werte in der Sozialversicherung 2026*, at 1 January 2026, published by the federation of Austrian social insurance institutions on the Kundmachung BGBl. II Nr. 263/2025 of 28 November 2025: the daily maximum of EUR 231.00, the monthly maximum of EUR 6,930.00 and the marginal threshold of EUR 551.10.

Before the first hire exists. The company form, the establishment and the trade licence decide which of the charges above the company meets at all, and each is settled at formation rather than afterwards.

The tax side of the same month. The company's own taxes, and the wage-related charges seen as company taxes, are on austria corporate tax. Where the line runs for an Austrian adviser is on tax advisor austria.

Company Registration Austria: Inheritance and Gift Tax in Austria. Succession is the other subject where Austria surprises people who assume a tax exists: inheritance tax in austria.

Tell us what the company will do, where, and who will be on the payroll: ask about your Austrian company, or start your onboarding if you are ready to engage.