VAT registration in Austria

Who Gets a UID, and Who Is Refused

Article 28(1) splits businesses into three groups, and the split is worth reading closely because it is the answer to most registration questions.

Must be issued. An entrepreneur who makes supplies in Austria that carry the right to input-tax deduction, or makes intra-Community acquisitions, or uses the § 25b or Art 25a special schemes. The tax office has no discretion here.

Must not be issued. An entrepreneur whose only Austrian supplies are declared through a one-stop-shop scheme in another Member State. A distance seller already registered for OSS in Germany does not also collect an Austrian number for the same supplies — that is the point of the scheme, and asking for one anyway produces a refusal, not a favour.

Issued on application. A business taxed only under the flat-rate agricultural regime in § 22, or making only supplies that exclude input-tax deduction, may still need a number for intra-Community supplies, intra-Community acquisitions or reverse-charge services received. It gets one by asking, on proof of need.

The consequence for a newly registered company is plain: incorporation and VAT registration are two separate events, and the second waits on trading activity. A tax office reviewing an application for a company with no contracts, no invoices and no premises is entitled to ask what supplies it expects to make.

The Four Rates

Section 10 UStG does not list four rates side by side. It sets one and then applies the reductions in a fixed order, which is why "which rate applies" is answered by working down the list rather than by picking from it.

The 4.9 per cent rate is new and most published guidance predates it. It covers a defined list — milk, yoghurt, butter, fresh eggs, fresh and frozen vegetables, pome and stone fruit, rice, wheat flour, plain pasta, bread, table salt — and eligibility turns on the Combined Nomenclature code, not on the everyday name of the product. The Finance Ministry says so explicitly: not every bread-like product qualifies. Food outside Annex 3 but inside Annex 1 stays at 10 per cent.

The EUR 55,000 Small-Business Exemption

The Kleinunternehmerregelung exempts a business whose turnover stays within EUR 55,000 gross in a calendar year. That threshold has been in force since 1 January 2025; the previous figure was EUR 35,000, calculated on a net basis, and any guidance still quoting it — or the EUR 42,000 figure that circulates without matching any official source — is out of date.

Two features of the current rule decide cases:

• The threshold is gross. The whole agreed consideration counts, not a net-of-tax figure. A business comparing itself against a net threshold will breach without noticing.
• There is a 10 per cent tolerance. Exceed EUR 55,000 by no more than 10 per cent and the exemption still runs to the end of that calendar year. Exceed it by more, and the exemption falls away from the transaction that breached the tolerance — that transaction included, not from the following year.

The exemption is not automatically good news. It removes input-tax deduction along with the obligation to charge, so a business making large start-up purchases, or selling mainly to VAT-registered customers who reclaim what they are charged anyway, is usually better off waiving it and registering.

Two Deadlines, Two Different Dates

Once registered, a business runs on two clocks. Missing the second one while keeping the first is a common pattern in foreign-owned Austrian companies, because most bookkeeping calendars are built around the return alone.

The preliminary return (Umsatzsteuervoranmeldung). Due on the 15th day of the second calendar month following the period, and the payment is due the same day. January's return and January's payment are both due on 15 March. The period is the calendar month by default; where the previous year's turnover did not exceed EUR 100,000, it is the calendar quarter, and a business under that threshold may opt into monthly filing by filing on time for January, binding for the rest of the year. After the year end there is an annual assessment, transmitted electronically unless the business genuinely lacks the technical means.

The recapitulative statement (Zusammenfassende Meldung). Due by the end of the month following the reporting period — a different date from the return, and an earlier one. It is required from any business that has made intra-Community supplies of goods, moved goods under the call-off stock rules, or supplied services taxable in another Member State where the customer accounts for the tax under Article 196 of the VAT Directive. Quarterly filers report by the end of the month following each quarter.

So an Austrian company invoicing a German client for consultancy in January owes a recapitulative statement by 28 February and its VAT return by 15 March, for the same month's work. Bookkeeping that tracks only the second date will be late on the first every time.

Foreign Companies Selling Into Austria

A company established outside Austria may need an Austrian UID without having an Austrian company at all — and, equally often, may be barred from getting one.

The dividing line is the OSS rule in Article 28(1). Where a foreign business's Austrian supplies are declared through a one-stop-shop scheme in its own Member State, an Austrian number must not be issued for them. Where the supplies fall outside any such scheme — holding stock in an Austrian warehouse, supplying goods locally, making intra-Community acquisitions into Austria — the ordinary trigger applies and registration follows.

Reverse charge removes the need in a third set of cases. Where an Austrian business customer accounts for the tax on a service received, the supplier does not register in Austria for that supply; it reports the service in its own recapitulative statement instead. Whether an Austrian entity is worth forming at all is then a commercial question rather than a VAT one, and the corporate services page sets out what an Austrian company obliges you to do once it exists.

Where This Goes Wrong

Four failures account for most of the VAT problems arriving at an Austrian adviser's desk, and none of them are exotic.

Assuming registration comes with the company. It does not, and a company sold as "VAT registered" without trading activity is describing a status the statute does not provide.

Quoting the wrong number on invoices. The UID, the Firmenbuch number and the tax number are three different identifiers from three different authorities. An EU customer validating a UID that turns out to be a register number will withhold the reverse-charge treatment and charge its own VAT.

Treating the small-business threshold as net. It is gross, and the difference at the margin is the whole VAT amount.

Filing the return and forgetting the recapitulative statement. The second obligation is triggered by cross-border activity that a purely domestic bookkeeping routine never encounters, and its deadline is the earlier of the two.