Running a company in Austria

Who We Help

Law Support works with clients who are not resident in Austria and need an Austrian corporate structure for a specific commercial reason. Four situations come up most often.

A foreign group opening an Austrian subsidiary. The parent company needs a locally registered entity to trade, invoice and hire in Austria, with accounting set up to report cleanly into group consolidation.

A founder relocating to Austria. The company and the founder's own right to live and work in Austria move together — forming it does not by itself grant residence, and a director who actually works in Austria needs a separate residence title once that work passes a few months.

An e-commerce seller crossing the VAT threshold. A business already trading into Austria from elsewhere in the EU and approaching the point where VAT registration becomes compulsory needs it completed before liability starts, not after.

An investor buying an existing company. Acquiring a going concern — a shelf company or an operating business — raises different questions from starting one: what the target's legal form allows, and what its tax history carries forward.

What We Handle

Each service below is tied to a specific audience and situation.

Package pricing for the services above is on the prices page.

Choosing a Legal Form

The GmbH is the default choice for most foreign-owned businesses: minimum share capital of EUR 10,000, with EUR 5,000 payable in cash before registration (as of 1 January 2024). An AG needs EUR 70,000 in share capital, with at least EUR 17,500 paid in at founding, and suits a business planning a large shareholder base or a future listing. The FlexKapG, available since 1 January 2024, uses the same EUR 10,000 / EUR 5,000 split but allows up to 24.99% of capital as non-voting shares — built for startups allocating equity to employees. A sole proprietorship needs no minimum capital but carries unlimited personal liability. The right structure depends on liability exposure, shareholder count, and whether outside investors will hold equity; see Legal Forms Compared for the full comparison.

Formation

Forming a company means signing the Gesellschaftsvertrag (articles of association) — normally as a notarial deed — depositing the minimum capital, and registering with the Firmenbuch. A single founder who is both sole shareholder and managing director can instead complete formation electronically through the Unternehmensserviceportal with an ID Austria signature, without a notary appointment; that route covers the initial formation only. Registration runs to approximately EUR 450 for a GmbH (as of July 2026). A genuine new-business formation may also qualify for relief from certain court fees, stamp duties and payroll surcharges for the month of formation plus the following 35 calendar months under the Neugründungs-Förderungsgesetz, provided the founder has not run a comparable business in Austria or abroad in the preceding five years. The document checklist and timeline are on the company formation page.

Bank Account

A company cannot be registered without a bank's written confirmation that the capital deposit has been paid in, and cannot trade afterwards without an operating account. For a company with non-resident owners, the bank reviews the source of funds and the full beneficial-ownership chain before the account opens, and that compliance review — not the paperwork — is usually what determines how long the process takes. See Austrian Bank Account for the documents banks ask for and what to do if an account is refused.

Tax Registration

Every company registers with the Finanzamt for a tax number and, in most cases, a VAT number. Corporate income tax (Körperschaftsteuer) is 23% for the 2026 tax year, a rate unchanged since 2024. The standard VAT rate is 20%; a business need not register for VAT at all below the Kleinunternehmergrenze of EUR 55,000 gross turnover per calendar year, a threshold raised from EUR 35,000 on 1 January 2025 — relevant for an online seller only now approaching it. Rates, thresholds and filing calendars in full are on the Taxes in Austria page.

Company Secretarial Work — Which Austria Does Not Have

Austria has no company secretary. The organs chapter of the GmbH-Gesetz names three: the managing directors (§ 15 GmbHG — at least one, natural persons only, appointed by shareholder resolution), the shareholders' meeting, and a supervisory board where § 29 GmbHG forces one. There is no secretary office and no register of secretaries, so a company arriving from the United Kingdom, Ireland, Cyprus or Hong Kong cannot appoint the officer its group structure assumes.

What clients mean when they ask for corporate secretarial services in Austria is nevertheless real work, and it has to go somewhere. In practice it splits into four:

• The registered seat and the post that arrives there. The Firmenbuch carries an address, and authority correspondence — Finanzamt, commercial court, social insurer — goes to it. A deadline missed because nobody opened the envelope is treated exactly like a deadline ignored.
• Filings that change the register. A new director, a resignation, a change of seat, an amended Gesellschaftsvertrag, a share transfer: each is a filing, most need notarial certification, and the register is the thing that decides who is in office, not the internal resolution.
• Disclosure to the commercial court. Annual accounts within nine months of the balance-sheet date under § 277 Abs 1 UGB, prepared within five under § 222 Abs 1 — the obligation that produces a court fine on the directors personally when it is missed. See the filing cycle for the sequence and the penalty.
• The paper trail behind the filings. Shareholder resolutions, director appointment minutes, the share register — the documents a buyer, a bank or an auditor asks for, and the ones that are hardest to reconstruct years later.

We hold the seat, take the correspondence, prepare and file the register changes, and keep the resolutions. What we do not do is pretend the Anglo-Irish office exists here: if your group's constitution requires a company secretary to sign, that signature has no standing under Austrian company law and the filing needs a director.

One threshold is worth knowing before you assume a board is coming. A supervisory board is compulsory only where § 29 GmbHG bites: share capital above EUR 70,000 and more than 50 shareholders, or more than 300 employees on average, or a controlling position in a group of that size. Both limbs of the first test have to be met, so a well-capitalised GmbH with three shareholders is not caught by it. Statute text checked against RIS on 31 July 2026.

Ongoing Accounting

Every GmbH prepares annual financial statements (Jahresabschluss) for the Firmenbuch; medium and large companies also need a statutory audit. For a subsidiary reporting into a foreign parent, that ordinarily means monthly bookkeeping, VAT returns, payroll processing, and annual statements formatted for both the Austrian filing and group consolidation. See Accounting for the recurring compliance calendar.

Employment

Hiring staff in Austria means registering each employee for social insurance before their first day and running monthly payroll. Employer-side ASVG social-insurance contributions add 20.98% of gross salary for 2026, on top of a separate 3.7% Dienstgeberbeitrag and further payroll-based charges. A non-EU manager who will actually work in Austria — rather than sign remotely — needs a residence title under the Niederlassungs- und Aufenthaltsgesetz once that work continues beyond six months, typically a Red-White-Red Card for self-employed key workers, subject to a labour-market assessment. See Residence Permits for the application route.

Exit or Liquidation

Closing a company formally means a shareholder resolution to dissolve it, appointment of a liquidator, notice to creditors, and a final deregistration from the Firmenbuch once liabilities are settled. Selling the company as a going concern is usually faster: a share deal transfers ownership without touching the underlying registration, and — where the company carries loss carryforwards — those remain usable against future profits up to 75% of a given year's taxable income under current law.

What We Do Not Do

Law Support handles corporate structuring, registration and compliance — not every service a growing company might need. We do not represent clients in court litigation or commercial disputes; that requires separate litigation counsel. We do not manage day-to-day operations, sales or hiring decisions once the company is running, and we do not provide personal tax advice unconnected to a company structure, or immigration services outside the corporate and investor-residence context covered on this site. The Firmenbuch is a public register: ownership can be structured through legitimate holding arrangements, but not made invisible from it, because Austrian law does not permit that.