The official English translation of the Austrian Tax Book — Das Steuerbuch, the annual guide to wage tax, income tax and the employee tax assessment (Arbeitnehmerveranlagung) published by the Austrian Federal Ministry of Finance (Bundesministerium für Finanzen, BMF) — converted to Markdown and split into one file per section for easy reading, searching and linking.
If you work in Austria and file (or are thinking about filing) an employee tax assessment to get a refund, this is the reference that explains how Austrian income tax actually works — tax brackets, tax credits, the commuter allowance, the Family Bonus Plus, deductible work expenses, home-office rules, extraordinary burdens, and the step-by-step procedure at the tax office.
📖 Read it online — thetax.at/tax-book
The same content in a searchable, mobile-friendly format, cross-linked to free Austrian tax calculators (income tax, wage tax, social security). Start here if you just want an answer: thetax.at/tax-book/2025 · thetax.at/tax-book/2026
| Year | Status | Chapters | Start reading |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | Complete | 7 of 7 | 2025 contents · online |
| 2026 | Complete | 7 of 7 | 2026 contents · online |
Each year is a self-contained snapshot: figures, tax brackets and credit amounts change annually, so always read the edition that matches the tax year you are filing for — not the year you file in. Doing your assessment in 2026 for income earned in 2025? Use the 2025 edition.
The seven chapters below follow the structure of the official book. Every chapter links to its full section list for each year.
| # | Chapter | What it covers | 2025 | 2026 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| I | General information on wage tax and income tax | Who is taxable in Austria, wage tax vs. income tax, the seven types of income, remuneration in kind | read | read |
| II | Tax scales and tax deductions | The progressive tax scale, the tax-free threshold, and every tax credit (Absetzbetrag) incl. the SV refund (Negativsteuer) | read | read |
| III | Wage tax computation by your employer | Commuter allowance, tax-free employer payments, per-diems, the 13th/14th salary, overtime & night-work supplements | read | read |
| IV | What claims may be asserted in the employee tax assessment? | Special expenses (Sonderausgaben), income-related expenses (Werbungskosten), home office, extraordinary burdens, disability costs, Family Bonus Plus | read | read |
| V | When should Form L 1i be filled in? | Employment income with no wage tax deducted, cross-border commuters, foreign employment income | read | read |
| VI | The procedure at the tax office | Filing via FinanzOnline or on paper, refunds and back-payments, advance payments, appeals (Beschwerde), instalments | read | read |
| VII | Other tax benefits | The premium-aided retirement scheme and premium-aided pension scheme | read | read |
Direct links to the questions people search for most. Each also has a page on
thetax.at with worked examples. Links below point to the
2025 edition — change /2025/ to /2026/ in the path for the 2026 text.
- Tax scale & tax brackets — how much income tax you pay in Austria
- Tax credits (Absetzbeträge) — sole-earner, single-parent, commuter and pensioner credits
- SV refund / Negativsteuer — getting money back on a low income
- Family Bonus Plus — the child tax credit, who claims it and how much
- Commuter allowance (Pendlerpauschale) — travel between home and work
- Income-related expenses (Werbungskosten) — what you can deduct as a job expense
- Home office / teleworking rules — the teleworking allowance and equipment
- Special expenses (Sonderausgaben) — donations, church contributions, insurance
- Extraordinary burdens (außergewöhnliche Belastungen) — medical costs, disability, dependants
- Overtime & night-work supplements — which premiums are tax-free
- The 13th and 14th salary — how the Jahressechstel is taxed
- How the employee tax assessment works — filing, deadlines, refunds
- Just looking for an answer? Read it on thetax.at/tax-book — it is searchable, works on your phone, and links each topic to a calculator.
- Browsing on GitHub? Start with the 2025 contents or
2026 contents. Every folder has a
README.mdwith the chapter introduction and its section list. - Want a local copy? Clone the repo — it is plain Markdown, no build step:
git clone https://github.com/thetax-at/tax-book.git
2025/
<chapter-slug>/
README.md # chapter introduction + section index
<section-slug>.md # one section per file
2026/
...
The original work is Das Steuerbuch (Tipps zur Arbeitnehmerveranlagung), published each year by the Austrian Federal Ministry of Finance (BMF) and released for public information. The English text in this repository is the BMF's own official translation — see the Ministry's publications page:
The only changes made here by thetax.at are format: the official document has been converted from PDF to Markdown and split into one file per section. The wording is the BMF's, not ours.
Not tax advice, and formatting is not authoritative. The PDF-to-Markdown conversion can introduce errors (tables, footnotes, paragraph references). Tax figures, thresholds and credit amounts change every year and individual circumstances vary — for anything binding, use the original BMF publication or consult a Steuerberater.
Spotted a conversion error — a broken table, a dropped footnote, a garbled paragraph reference, a wrong heading level?
- Open an issue naming the chapter/section and what looks wrong, or
- Open a pull request fixing the relevant
.mdfile so it matches the official BMF PDF.
Please do not rewrite the wording — the text must stay faithful to the BMF's official translation. Substantive tax questions belong with the BMF or a Steuerberater, not this repo.
- Markdown conversion, per-section file layout and the index/README files: authored by thetax.at and released under the MIT License.
- Text of The Tax Book itself (the English translation and all substantive content): © Republic of Austria — Federal Ministry of Finance, published for public information and reproduced here unchanged. Source: https://www.bmf.gv.at/en/publications.html. MIT does not apply to it; if you redistribute the tax content, credit the BMF as author.
See NOTICE.md for details.
thetax.at provides free, English-language Austrian tax calculators and guides — income tax, wage tax, social security, and VAT — plus this edition of the Tax Book. Built for employees, freelancers and newcomers who need Austrian tax explained in plain English.
Keywords: Austrian Tax Book English, Das Steuerbuch English translation, Austria income tax guide, wage tax Austria, employee tax assessment, Arbeitnehmerveranlagung English, Family Bonus Plus, Pendlerpauschale, Werbungskosten, Sonderausgaben, tax refund Austria, FinanzOnline.