A. General provisions
What does your employer have to keep in mind when calculating the wage tax?
When calculating your wage tax, your employer already considers several tax exemptions and tax benefits. You should therefore inform your employer of all circumstances and changes that may have an impact on your tax calculation (e.g. marital status, place of residence, child(ren), being a single earner, being a single parent, lump sum for commuters, tax office decision on tax allowances). If you fulfil your reporting obligations (e.g. that the single-earner tax credit no longer applies), your employer is responsible for correctly computing your wage tax.
Your employer must also hand you or provide you electronically with, respectively, a statement regarding the wages/salary paid to you for your work in a calendar month.
This statement must comprise the following data:
- Gross earning
- Basis for mandatory contributions (social security contributions)
- Mandatory contributions
- Assessment base for your contribution to a company pension fund and the amount paid
- Wage tax assessment base
- Withheld wage tax
- The considered Family Bonus Plus
As a rule, after the end of a calendar year the employer must submit the (annual) pay slips for the year in electronic form to the tax office or to the Austrian Health Insurance Fund by the end of February. The pay slips must correspond to the official form (Form L 16).
Even if payroll accounting is done "by hand", the pay slips must as a rule be submitted in electronic form. In this case, ELDA (Electronic Data Exchange with the Austrian Social Security Providers), the communication programme of the Austrian Health Insurance Fund, can be used. If no internet connection is available, the paper-based pay slips may be sent to the tax office, namely by the end of January.
As an employee, you may also ask your employer for a(n annual) pay slip upon termination of the employment relationship. However, since the tax office receives the pay-slip data from your employer, this document is only for your personal information. Please do not send this pay slip to the tax office.