A foreign company usually owes Austrian VAT not because of where it is incorporated, but because of where the supply happens and where its goods are stored. This guide explains Austria's rates, the registration triggers, the One-Stop-Shop and IOSS, the B2B reverse charge, and the e-commerce and SaaS cases that most often go wrong.
A business with no fixed establishment in Austria is typically required to register for VAT from its first taxable supply there — there is no local turnover buffer. But many cross-border situations are handled without an Austrian registration at all: B2B sales under the reverse charge, and B2C distance sales reported through the EU One-Stop-Shop. The task is to identify which bucket each transaction falls into before the first invoice, not after an audit.
Austria's VAT (Umsatzsteuer) sits inside the EU VAT system. The standard rate is 20%, with two reduced rates for defined categories, plus special regional rates in the small enclaves of Jungholz and Mittelberg. The classification of your product or service decides the rate — and misclassifying it is a common and expensive mistake.
The exact category list is detailed and changes over time; confirm the rate for your specific supply against current BMF guidance before pricing. The figures here are orientation, not a tariff.
Austria does have a small-business exemption (the Kleinunternehmerregelung), and its turnover ceiling was raised to €55,000 from 2025. Founders often assume it shields a foreign seller until sales build up. It generally does not. The exemption is aimed at businesses established in Austria; a company with no Austrian establishment typically cannot rely on it for its Austrian supplies and is, in principle, registrable from the first taxable transaction.
There is a newer wrinkle: from 2025 the EU introduced a cross-border small-business scheme that can let a small EU business apply an exemption in other member states under strict conditions. It is narrow and procedural, and it does not cover every situation — treat it as a possibility to check, not a default. The safe planning assumption for a non-established seller remains: no local buffer, so determine the correct treatment before you supply.
"We're too small to register in Austria" is true for an Austrian corner shop and usually false for a foreign company making taxable Austrian supplies. The analysis is about the nature and place of the supply, not the size of the seller.
Before worrying about forms, answer three questions. Together they place a transaction into the right regime — local registration, reverse charge, or OSS.
Most "surprise" Austrian VAT bills trace back to question 2: a company that thought it was selling cross-border was actually selling from Austrian stock, which is a domestic supply requiring Austrian VAT and, usually, Austrian registration.
This is the practical core. The list is not exhaustive and each line has conditions, but these are the recurring triggers for a foreign company.
Read the table as a map of questions to resolve, not as automatic answers: the reverse charge and OSS routes depend on the customer's status and on correct, consistent documentation.
The One-Stop-Shop (OSS), live across the EU since July 2021, is the mechanism that lets a business sell B2C across the EU without registering in every country. You register for OSS in one member state and file a single periodic return covering your B2C sales to consumers in all the others, paying the destination-country VAT through that one return.
The EU-wide threshold that pulls you into destination VAT for B2C goods and TBE services is a combined €10,000 per year across all member states; above it, you charge the customer's local VAT rate and the cleanest way to report it is OSS. Below it, a micro-seller can often still charge home-country VAT.
OSS reports B2C cross-border supplies. It does not replace a local registration that arises because you hold stock in Austria, make domestic supplies, or have local events or installations. Many sellers correctly use OSS for shipments from abroad yet still need an Austrian number for their Austrian warehouse — both can be true at once.
When a foreign business supplies services, and in many cross-border goods situations, to an Austrian VAT-registered customer, the reverse charge frequently applies: the Austrian customer self-accounts for the VAT, and the supplier issues an invoice without Austrian VAT but with the correct reference to the reverse charge. In those cases, no Austrian registration may be needed for that stream at all.
This is why pure B2B service exporters often have no Austrian VAT footprint, while B2C sellers and anyone holding stock do. The dividing line is the customer's status and the place-of-supply rules, which is exactly why collecting and validating your customer's VAT number matters: it is the evidence that the reverse charge applies.
Treating a sale as B2B reverse-charge without a valid, checked customer VAT number is a frequent audit failure. If the number is invalid or the customer is really a consumer, the supply can flip to a taxable B2C supply — potentially with Austrian VAT and a registration obligation you did not plan for.
For physical e-commerce, the single most important fact is where the goods physically sit. The moment you place stock in an Austrian fulfilment centre — including a marketplace's logistics programme — sales dispatched from that stock are Austrian domestic supplies. OSS does not cover that; it generally requires an Austrian VAT registration and local returns.
Marketplace rules add a second layer. Under the EU's deemed-supplier provisions, in defined cases the marketplace is treated as the seller for VAT on certain B2C transactions, which changes who accounts for the tax. It does not remove your own obligations for stock movements, intra-EU transfers of your goods, or sales outside the deemed-supplier scope.
For software, SaaS and other electronically supplied services, the place of supply is normally where the customer is. That makes the B2B / B2C split decisive:
A SaaS company selling only to businesses across the EU may never need an Austrian registration. The same company adding a self-service consumer tier can suddenly owe destination VAT in many countries — which is precisely the problem OSS was built to solve.
If a registration is required, it comes with ongoing obligations. These are manageable but unforgiving on deadlines.
Coordinate the VAT registration with corporate tax and banking from the start. A company that registers for VAT but cannot reconcile its invoices, stock movements and bank flows creates exactly the inconsistencies a tax audit looks for.
Almost all of these come from applying a company-size intuition to a supply-based tax.
A non-established seller generally has no Austrian turnover buffer for taxable supplies.
Selling from an Austrian warehouse is a domestic supply — OSS does not cover it.
An unverified customer number can turn a B2B sale into a taxable B2C supply.
OSS handles cross-border B2C, not local stock, events or installations.
Applying 20% or a reduced rate to the wrong category creates under- or over-charging.
Backdated registrations bring retrospective VAT, interest and corrective filings.
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Explore bankingSend your customer split (B2B vs B2C), where your goods are stored, your shipping countries, expected volumes and whether you sell digital services. We identify whether you need an Austrian registration, can use OSS, or fall under the reverse charge — and coordinate it with corporate tax.