Tax Advisers in Austria
What a Steuerberater Is, and What Is Reserved to One

The Wirtschaftstreuhandberufsgesetz 2017 creates exactly two professions: the Wirtschaftsprüfer, the auditor, and the Steuerberater, the tax adviser (§ 1). Both are free professions, and the second is the one a foreign-owned company deals with every year.

The entitlement is conferred, not earned. Under WTBG 2017 § 5 Abs. 2 a natural person becomes a Berufsberechtigter, and so entitled to practise independently, only after public appointment by the Kammer der Wirtschaftstreuhänder. Abs. 3 does the same for a firm, which becomes entitled only after recognition by the chamber. Examinations and degrees lead to that appointment; they are not the appointment. Nobody is a Steuerberater because of a qualification, and nobody is one because of a business card.

The title then becomes compulsory. WTBG 2017 § 73 Abs. 1 Z 1 obliges a natural person entitled to practise independently to designate themselves Steuerberater when doing so, and Abs. 2 allows anyone within § 1 to use Wirtschaftstreuhänder alongside it. A duty to use a word is what makes its absence informative.

The chamber behind all of this is the Kammer der Wirtschaftstreuhänder, a public-law corporation seated in Vienna, which WTBG 2017 § 151 Abs. 4 entitles to bear the designation Kammer der Steuerberater und Wirtschaftsprüfer, the KSW. Both names mean the same body, and English-language pages use them interchangeably.

The operative word is vorbehalten, reserved. WTBG 2017 § 2 Abs. 1, in the version in force from 19 February 2026 (BGBl. I Nr. 137/2017 as amended by BGBl. I Nr. 6/2026), opens: "Den zur selbständigen Ausübung des Wirtschaftstreuhandberufes Steuerberater Berechtigten ist es vorbehalten, unbeschadet des § 4, folgende Tätigkeiten auszuüben". Six heads follow, and they are the monopoly.

The same paragraph then lists, in Abs. 2 and Abs. 3, things the holder is weiters berechtigt, additionally entitled, to do. Only the first list creates a monopoly. That distinction runs through both professional acts and it is the single most useful thing to know before reading anything else about who may do what.

Two of those reserved heads belong to other pages on this site and are only named here. Bookkeeping and the closing of the books are set out at bookkeeping services austria, and payroll has its own page; this page is about heads 1 and 4, the advice and the representation.

Austrian law does not have one licence here, it has four. The Bilanzbuchhaltungsgesetz 2014 creates three more professions alongside the Steuerberater, and each has its own reserved list: the Bilanzbuchhalter (BiBuG 2014 § 2 Abs. 1), the Buchhalter (§ 3 Abs. 1) and the Personalverrechner (§ 4 Abs. 1).

On the bookkeeping and payroll axis the four overlap heavily, and the neighbouring pages set that out. On this page's axis they barely overlap at all. Tax advice appears in the Steuerberater's reserved list and in none of the three BiBuG lists, and the right to represent a taxpayer thins out sharply from the first row to the fourth.

The ordinary rule is permissive. BAO § 83 Abs. 1, in the version in force from 1 January 2026 (BGBl. I Nr. 97/2025), lets a party be represented by any adult natural person with legal capacity, by a legal person or by a registered partnership, subject to proving the authority. Read alone, that looks as though anyone at all can act.

The next paragraph closes it. BAO § 84 Abs. 1 provides that the tax authority has to reject as representatives those persons and partnerships who conduct the representation of others geschäftsmäßig, on a business basis, "wenn auch unentgeltlich", even where they charge nothing, without being entitled to do so. The principal must be told of the rejection at the same time.

And Abs. 2 is the sentence that decides whether any of this matters commercially: what a rejected person puts forward in the principal's matters after the rejection, in writing or orally, is "ohne abgabenrechtliche Wirkung", without effect in tax law. A filing made by somebody the authority has rejected does not merely attract criticism. It does not count, and the deadline it was meant to meet carries on running.

This is the strongest reason in Austrian law to appoint an Austrian representative, and it is a date rather than an argument.

BAO § 134a Abs. 1, in force since 1 January 2024 (BGBl. I Nr. 201/2023), lets a taxpayer who has instructed a berufsmäßiger Parteienvertreter holding a live power of attorney to file do so, within an automation-supported Quotenregelung, at the latest by 31 March of the second calendar year following the assessment period. Where that period is used, the same sentence provides that § 134 and § 135 are not to be applied, so the ordinary deadline falls away and the late-filing surcharge with it. Abs. 3 lets the tax office extend the date uniformly to 30 June of that second following year.

Who counts as such a representative is a closed list of three, and the first of them is the check from the section above. Quotenregelungsverordnung § 1 Z 3 names holders entered in the list of ordinary members of the Kammer der Wirtschaftstreuhänder under WTBG 2017 § 173 Abs. 1 Z 1 (lit. a), notaries entered in the register of notaries with their substitutes and approved partnerships (lit. b), and lawyers, law firms and established European lawyers entered in their own lists (lit. c). The same list the reader can inspect is the list the deadline depends on.

There is a cut-off, and it is early. QuRV § 2 Abs. 1 makes the extended date available only if the representative has registered the tax number for that assessment period, through the FinanzOnline function provided for it, by 30 June of the calendar year following the assessment period. After that, Abs. 3 allows registration on three grounds only: a change of representative where the return is still outstanding, a retroactive reorganisation of the taxpayer or the representative, or a tax number issued only after that 30 June. Abs. 4 shuts the scheme to taxpayers in liquidation and to those over whom insolvency proceedings are open. The scheme covers income tax, corporate income tax, income-determination and VAT returns (§ 1 Z 4), which is worth knowing next to austria income tax rate and next to vat registration service austria.

Austria will say in advance, in binding form, how a transaction will be taxed. BAO § 118 Abs. 1 obliges the tax office to issue an Auskunftsbescheid on a written application about facts not yet realised, where there is a special interest because of the significant tax consequences. Three features matter to someone setting up.

The subject matter is closed. Abs. 2 allows five areas and no others: reorganisations, corporate groups, international tax law, VAT law and the existence of abuse under BAO § 22.

A company that does not yet exist is covered. Where the facts are to be realised by a legal person not yet legally in existence, a person with a legitimate interest of their own may apply (Abs. 3 lit. c), and the company acquires the right to have the ruling applied if it claims it within one month of the start of its legal existence (Abs. 7 lit. c). That is a different position from a company already trading, which is one of the things what a shelf company in Austria does and does not include turns on.

The application is not a letter. Abs. 4 requires a self-contained statement of the facts, the special interest, the legal problem, concrete legal questions, a fully reasoned legal opinion of the applicant and the turnover data that fixes the fee, filed through FinanzOnline where the applicant already has an Austrian tax number. Abs. 5a asks for the notice within two months tunlichst, where possible.

The question every foreign owner asks, and WTBG 2017 § 6 answers it precisely rather than approximately.

Who may. A national of an EU member state, an EEA state or Switzerland, established there and lawfully practising a profession corresponding to § 2 or § 3, may serve in Austria in that field temporarily and occasionally (Abs. 1). Abs. 2 sets four conditions together: the nationality, the establishment abroad, a live entitlement in the state of establishment (or, where the profession is unregulated there, at least one year's practice in the preceding ten), and current professional indemnity insurance within § 11 with § 77 Abs. 1.

How they must appear. Abs. 3 requires the service to be given under the professional title of the state of establishment, in that state's official language, worded so that no confusion with the Austrian titles is possible. A foreign adviser who presents themselves to an Austrian client in a way that reads as the Austrian title is not using this route, they are inside § 124 Abs. 1 Z 2.

What falls outside it. Abs. 5 excludes statutory audit work. And the words carrying the most weight are "vorübergehend und gelegentlich": a standing arrangement in which a foreign firm runs an Austrian company's tax affairs year after year is not, on the face of the provision, temporary and occasional. The statute sets a test and not a number of days, and this page does not supply one.

A reservation is only half the map. WTBG 2017 § 4 Abs. 1 says in terms that the Act does not affect the powers of nine groups: lawyers (Z 1), patent attorneys (Z 2), notaries (Z 3), authorities and public-law corporations so far as they give help or assistance in tax matters within their remit (Z 4), cooperative audit federations and the savings bank audit office within their assigned tasks (Z 5), trade licence holders, Gewerbetreibende (Z 6), Ziviltechniker (Z 7), statutory professional representations helping their own members in administrative fiscal penal proceedings (Z 8), and anyone practising a Bilanzbuchhaltung profession (Z 9).

Two cautions. It is a carve-out from this Act only: each group's scope is set by its own law, so Z 6 does not make a trade licence a licence to do anything, it means the WTBG is not what stops it. And Z 4 reaches an authority only within its own remit.

Company formation sits on the other side of the line, and it sits there by name. Management consultancy including business organisation is a regulated trade under GewO 1994 § 94 Z 74, and § 136 Abs. 3 Z 1 expressly entitles the holder to advise on the formation, closure and transfer of undertakings.

It does not apply any of this to a reader's own position, and it cannot: WTBG 2017 § 2 Abs. 1 Z 1 reserves that. Every rule above is stated as what the law provides and what follows mechanically from it, and nowhere does this page tell anybody which professional they need, whether their present arrangement is inside the reservation, or what to do about their tax affairs.

We are not a Steuerberater. We do not give tax advice, do not keep or close books, do not run payroll, do not prepare or file tax returns, do not apply for rulings and do not act for anyone before Finanzamt Österreich, the Amt für Betrugsbekämpfung, a municipality or the administrative courts. Nothing on this page is an offer to do any of those things, and Austrian law is the reason: 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 the address for service, make and amend the Firmenbuch filings and run the corporate administration around them.

Two absences are deliberate. No fee, ours or anybody else's: the only two money figures on this page are fixed by Austrian statute, the ruling contribution and the surcharge ceiling. No processing time, beyond the statute's own qualified tunlichst two months for a ruling, because no Austrian authority publishes one.

• Wirtschaftstreuhandberufsgesetz 2017, BGBl. I Nr. 137/2017 as amended by BGBl. I Nr. 6/2026: § 2, the reserved and additionally entitled lists; § 4, the nine groups the Act does not touch; § 6, cross-border services; § 73, the professional titles; § 124, the administrative offences and the EUR 20,000 ceiling; and § 173, the list of members. Cited in text with their paragraph: § 1, § 5 (public appointment and recognition), § 11, § 74, § 77, § 80 and § 151.
• Bundesabgabenordnung, BGBl. Nr. 194/1961: § 84, the duty to reject an unentitled business representative; § 118, the advance ruling, in the version in force from 1 January 2027; and § 134a, the quota period. Cited in text: § 22, § 83 (who may represent a party, in force from 1 January 2026), § 134 and § 135.
• Quotenregelungsverordnung, BGBl. II Nr. 370/2023 as amended by BGBl. II Nr. 146/2024: § 1, the definitions including who is a berufsmäßiger Parteienvertreter, and § 2, registering and deregistering a tax number. Cited in text: § 3.
• Kammer der Steuerberater und Wirtschaftsprüfer, the list of members the chamber publishes under WTBG 2017 § 173.
• Bilanzbuchhaltungsgesetz 2014, BGBl. I Nr. 191/2013, §§ 2, 3 and 4, and Gewerbeordnung 1994 § 94 Z 74 and § 136 Abs. 3 Z 1, cited in text with their paragraph. The accounting and payroll pages link both acts at the paragraph.

• our corporate tax overview: the rates, the minimum tax a dormant company still owes, and the ordinary filing calendar this page deliberately leaves alone.
• bookkeeping services austria: the same four authorisations read on the bookkeeping axis, and what the Bundesabgabenordnung asks of the books themselves.
• the inheritance and gift tax guide: the other Austrian subject where what people assume about the tax and what the statute says have parted company.