Income tax (Austria)
The payroll tax is in Austria a special form of collection of income tax and of income from employment by deduction from wages raised. An employee is a natural person who receives income from employment; An employer is someone who pays wages within the meaning of Section 25 EStG 1988 .
Wage tax rate
With the Tax Reform Act 2005, the tax rate was redesigned and the calculation formulas were laid down in the Income Tax Act ( § 66 EStG 1988).
The wage tax is determined by applying the income tax rate. It is extrapolated to an annual income and the wage tax is calculated. The resulting wage tax amount is reduced by the deductible amounts and divided by the extrapolation factor (a year should be set at 360 days) and rounded to full cents.
In principle, the tax for the respective unrounded assessment base must be determined exactly. However, the 2002 wage tax guidelines also permit a determination of the monthly wage, which is rounded to the nearest whole euro, or a daily wage that is rounded to 10 cents. These minor deviations are tolerated and offset in the employee tax assessment.
On January 1, 2016, the new income and wage tax rates came into force in Austria as part of the 2015/2016 tax reform. This changed the annual income tax rate levels.
From January 1, 2017, it is also possible to carry out an application-free employee tax assessment (income tax adjustment) at the tax office. A form is no longer required. The Ministry of Finance automatically sends the tax compensation to all employees who have not submitted any business expenses, special expenses or extraordinary charges in the previous years. The application-free assessment is carried out automatically if no tax assessment for the previous year has been received by the tax office by the end of June. If an employee does not agree to this automatic notification, it can be rejected and a manual notification can be submitted instead. A period of five years applies for this.
Pay period
This is the period for which wages are paid. It must not exceed one calendar month. If an employment relationship begins or ends during a month, the wage payment period is the calendar day ( Section 77 EStG 1988). The legislature has thus only allowed two wage payment periods: the calendar month and the calendar day. The month is to be counted with 30 days, the year with 360 days.
Determination of income tax
Before the wage tax rate is applied, the following amounts must be deducted from wages (list in extracts - § 62 EStG 1988):
- Flat rate for advertising expenses
- Lump sum for special expenses
- Mandatory contributions to legal interest groups
- Contributions of the compulsorily insured in the statutory social insurance
- Commuter flat rate
- Allowances based on an allowance notice
- Flat rate allowances for the disabled
Tax exemptions
The following list is excerpts and lists the tax exemptions that are often granted ( Section 3 EStG 1988):
- Aid to Student Support Act and the Student Support Act
- Maternity allowance
- Unemployment benefit
- Emergency aid , childcare allowance, aid under the Labor Market Promotion Act
- Benefits according to the Disability Employment Act
- Family allowance , birth allowance etc.
- Income for beneficiary work abroad
- Usual benefits in kind at company events and participation in them
- Future security grants up to € 300 per year
- Free or discounted meals, meal vouchers
See also
Web links
- Austrian Federal Chancellery, Legal Information System: Federal Law: Entire Legal Provision for Income Tax Act 1988, version of July 19, 2009, income tax guidelines 2002
Remarks
- ↑ BMF - Tax Reform 2015/2016 - All information. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on December 2, 2017 ; accessed on December 1, 2017 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
