Tax Number in Austria (Steuernummer)

Five different numbers get called a tax number in English, and a business meets three of them in its first month. The government's own business portal draws the line: "the tax number is not the same as the VAT ID Number".

Austria's own submission to the OECD gives the written form as 99-999/9999 and the explanation as nine digits, noting that "the hyphen and the slash are not mandatory in all cases (eg for the purpose of IT processing they should be omitted)". Two Austrian sources agree from the other direction: the office "erteilt eine 9-stellige Steuernummer", and the ministry's instruction for paying tax by transfer calls it the neunstellige Steuernummer and makes quoting it compulsory.

So much for the outside of the number. About the inside the official sources say nothing, which is worth stating plainly because three of the pages ranking for this query say otherwise. No Austrian official text publishes a construction rule or a check-digit rule for the Steuernummer. Searched on 17 September 2026: the OECD entry, bmf.gv.at, usp.gv.at, oesterreich.gv.at and the full-text index of the federal law database. That is the opposite of the VAT number, where the ministry does publish the rule and this site cites it.

One thing the ministry's own pages do show. Where tax has to be paid before a number has been notified, it publishes a fictitious tax number for each of its offices and units to be used instead, and each begins with that unit's own two-digit number: 11 for the Finanzamt für Großbetriebe, 68 for the Graz-Stadt unit of Finanzamt Österreich. That describes a published table, not a rule about real numbers.

No. It has not been a local office since 1 January 2021, and this is the commonest error in the material circulating in English.

The Bundesabgabenordnung, in the version in force from that date, sets out what the federal tax administration consists of: the Minister for Finance, two Finanzämter, namely Finanzamt Österreich and the Finanzamt für Großbetriebe, and the Zollamt Österreich, alongside the Amt für Betrugsbekämpfung, the Zentrale Services and the Prüfdienst für Lohnabgaben und Beiträge (BAO § 49). There is no list of regional offices, because there are none.

Finanzamt Österreich is the residual authority. It handles any task given to a tax authority where neither the Minister, the Finanzamt für Großbetriebe nor the Zollamt Österreich is competent (BAO § 60 Abs. 1). One line of the same paragraph matters more than the rest here: it is in any event competent for the VAT of entrepreneurs who run their business from abroad and have in Austria neither a permanent establishment nor turnover from Austrian real property (Abs. 2 Z 2). A foreign company does not have to work out which Austrian region it belongs to.

The local names that survive, Dienststelle Wien 1/23, Dienststelle Linz, Dienststelle Graz-Stadt, are units of that one authority, not offices of their own, and it has one postal address for the whole country: Finanzamt Österreich, Postfach 260, 1000 Wien.

The statute is nearly silent about the number itself. Steuernummer appears in the Bundesabgabenordnung exactly once, in § 60 Abs. 2 Z 5, for taxpayers "denen noch keine Steuernummer bekanntgegeben worden ist", to whom no tax number has yet been notified. The law treats it as something the authority assigns and communicates, and nowhere describes what it looks like.

Several widely read English descriptions of the Austrian system, including the one that ranks first for this query, still describe tax offices competent for a taxpayer's place of residence. They were written before the reform.

No, and the Ministry of Finance says so in four words: "Die Steuernummer bleibt unveränderlich." The number stays unchangeable. The same page adds that it is first notified in writing when the tax account is assigned, and that it appears on every written document the office sends.

What can change is the bank account the tax is paid into, because that follows the office and the unit. So the practical rule is the opposite of the instinct: keep the number, and take the payment details from the most recent letter or booking statement. The BIC is BUNDATWW for every tax-office account.

One English description in wide circulation says a tax identification number can change when a taxpayer moves. That followed from the old structure of offices competent by residence, and it has not been the position since 2021.

A company registered in Vienna files Verf 15. A company registered anywhere else, selling into Austria or operating there without an establishment, files a different form, to a different unit, with a different evidence package.

Verf 19 asks for the business name as it stands on the certificate from its home state, the seat or place of management, the VAT identification number there or, failing that, the tax number there, any other active or inactive EU identification numbers, an exact description of what the business does in Austria, where goods come from and go to, the starting date, and the expected Austrian turnover in the first two years. A third-country business must name a fiscal representative in Austria, who is also its agent for service, or else an agent for service. Three attachments are listed: a confirmation of entrepreneur status in the original, a register extract in copy, and contracts. And the form states its own condition in one sentence: "Eine Vergabe der Steuernummer kann erst nach Einlangen des Fragebogens mit den Beilagen erfolgen." Nothing is assigned until the questionnaire and its attachments have arrived: a condition, not a timetable, and no Austrian source publishes a processing time.

A branch or a subsidiary registered in Austria is outside Verf 19's scope: it has an Austrian presence and takes the questionnaire for its legal form.

The number and the account arrive together: from the moment the business is registered it has an account at the tax office, set up under the holder's name and the tax number. The statute behind it is short. For taxes levied recurrently by the same authority, and their ancillary claims, each taxpayer's debits, payments and credits are booked together in a running account (BAO § 213 Abs. 1).

In practice it behaves like a bank account that only the tax office writes to. Everything the business owes is paid into it: VAT, income tax, corporate income tax, wage-related taxes, the Normverbrauchsabgabe. A credit is not stranded: it can cover the next liability, be repaid to a nominated bank account, or be transferred to another tax account, on an application made informally, in writing or in FinanzOnline, with no form prescribed.

What is filed against the account, and when, is a separate subject: vat filing austria. Keeping the books that produce those figures is reserved work in Austria, to licensed Bilanzbuchhalter and Steuerberater (BiBuG 2014 §§ 2 and 3, WTBG 2017 § 2 Abs. 1): bookkeeping austria.

No, and it is worth being exact about why, because more than half the search demand around this number is people trying.

Austria's own report to the OECD answers it in two words under the heading "TIN verification tool": "not available". There is no register, no public search and no official validator. The same report gives the reason without meaning to: "Austria issues TINs which are not reported on official documents of identification", and no TIN card is issued. The number is a file reference between one taxpayer and one authority, so there is nothing for a public tool to check against.

Nor can it be checked offline. On the VAT number the Ministry of Finance publishes the construction rule and the last character is a check digit, which at least catches a typo. For the tax number no equivalent rule is published, so a nine-digit string cannot be tested at all. That is also why this page prints no example number: with no rule to fail, any number invented for illustration might be somebody's real one.

What a reader normally wants is one of two other things, and both do have an official answer.

• To identify an Austrian company, its legal form, its seat, who may sign for it: the austria corporate registry, the court-kept Firmenbuch, which is public and searchable.
• To check a business partner's VAT status before invoicing: the confirmation procedure through FinanzOnline, or VIES at EU level, both in the VAT number guide.

One consequence for anyone being asked. If a bank or a platform asks for your "Austrian TIN", it wants these nine digits, and the only person who can supply them is you, from your own correspondence or FinanzOnline.

Not automatically, and the distinction is the jurisdiction's own. In Austria's report to the OECD the answer to whether tax identification numbers are issued automatically to all residents is "Individuals No, Entities Yes", because "TINs are only issued to individuals who are liable to tax". A company gets its number as part of being registered; a person gets one on coming into the tax system, not on arriving in the country.

Two things follow that catch people out. An employee whose income tax is deducted from their wages may never have been sent a tax number at all, which is why a self-certification form asking for a "TIN" can be met with a blank. And a number that does exist is on no card: finding it means finding a letter or logging in.

A non-resident individual with Austrian income is a different case again. Verf 19 is a questionnaire for businesses, and no official source read for this page sets out the route for an individual with no Austrian business, so none is described here. Whether a particular person is liable to Austrian tax at all is the question Austrian law reserves to a licensed Steuerberater.

The tax number is the file, not the registration. Being taken onto the Austrian VAT register, and what is filed against the account afterwards, is a separate job: vat filing austria. If the question is about your own company rather than the procedure, ask about your Austrian tax registration.