Invoicing in Austria: what the law requires

The mandatory fields (§11 UStG 1994)

A standard invoice above €400 gross must state:

1. Your name and address
2. The customer's name and address
3. Quantity and commercial description of the goods, or the nature and scope of the service
4. The date of supply, or the period the invoice covers
5. The net amount and the VAT rate that applies — or, if the supply is exempt, a note saying which exemption
6. The VAT amount, labelled as Umsatzsteuer or Mehrwertsteuer
7. The invoice date
8. A sequential number, unique across all your invoices
9. Your UID-Nummer (format ATU plus eight digits)

Missing fields are not cosmetic: your customer loses the input-VAT deduction until the invoice is corrected — so it comes back to you, and your payment waits.

The sequential number in that list has rules of its own — how to number invoices covers the series and what to do about a gap. To start from a document that already carries these fields, use one of our invoice templates.

Two thresholds decide what an invoice must carry

Austria has three invoice tiers, and the middle one is what most freelancers issue:

• Up to €400 gross — a Kleinbetragsrechnung (§11 Abs. 6). Your name and address, the invoice date, quantity and description, the date of supply, the gross total in one figure and the VAT rate. No customer address, no invoice number, no UID, no separate tax line.
• €400.01 to €10,000 — the full list above.
• Over €10,000 gross — the full list plus your customer's UID-Nummer, when you are established in Austria and are billing another business for its business.

The €10,000 recipient-UID rule has no German equivalent, and it is the field most often missing from an invoice written to German advice. Since 1 January 2025 an exempt small business may use the simplified format at any amount, not only up to €400.

No VAT: the small-business rule (§6 Abs. 1 Z 27 UStG)

The threshold was raised on 1 January 2025 from €35,000 net to €55,000, and it now counts the whole agreed amount rather than a notional net figure. You stay exempt while neither last year nor this year exceeds it; going over by up to 10 percent — so up to €60,500 — lets the exemption run to the end of that calendar year, and past €60,500 it stops at the transaction that crosses the line. You charge no VAT and show none, but the invoice must say why:

„Umsatzsteuerfrei aufgrund der Kleinunternehmerregelung” — VAT-exempt under the Austrian small-business rule.

Since the same date there is also an EU-wide version. A business established in one member state can use another's small-business exemption while its Union-wide turnover stays under €100,000, after registering in its home state and receiving an identifier ending in „-EX”. There is no 10 percent tolerance on the €100,000.

VAT rates, including the one added in July 2026

Four rates apply to ordinary supplies, and the newest one is the one competing pages have not caught up with:

• 20% — the standard rate, everything not listed elsewhere
• 13% — live animals and plants, firewood, artists, film and circus performances, admission to sporting events
• 10% — residential letting, hotel accommodation, camping sites, refuse collection, books, newspapers, and foods outside the 4.9% list
• 4.9% — since 1 July 2026, a permanent rate for listed basic foods: milk, yoghurt, butter, eggs, most vegetables, common fruit, rice, wheat flour, plain pasta, bread and table salt
• 19% — Jungholz and Mittelberg only, for businesses established there

The 4.9% rate was published as BGBl. I Nr. 37/2026 on 10 June 2026 and applies from 1 July. It is defined strictly by customs classification, not by product name, and it covers goods — deliveries and imports alike — but not services: restaurant and catering sales stay where they were.

E-invoicing: the state today, cross-border from 2030

Austria has no national B2B e-invoicing mandate, and the EU one that exists reaches only across borders. An electronic invoice needs the recipient's agreement and must keep its authenticity, integrity and readability — a PDF by email is fine when the customer accepts it. Selling to the federal government is the exception:

• Since 1 January 2014, suppliers to federal bodies must submit structured e-invoices (§5 IKTKonG). Paper and PDF are not accepted
• Submission goes through the USP business portal at e-Rechnung.gv.at, or over the Peppol network
• The accepted formats are ebInterface and UBL 2.1; Peppol is the transport, not a format
• No domestic B2B mandate is legislated in Austria, and none has been announced
• Cross-border is different, and it is already law. From 1 July 2030 the EU's ViDA directive requires structured e-invoicing and near-real-time reporting for intra-EU B2B supplies — including the reverse-charged services an Austrian business bills to a German client. A plain PDF stops counting as an invoice for those

This is the sharpest difference from the neighbour, where receiving structured invoices is already compulsory and issuing them becomes so in stages — the German rules are on their own page.

Deadlines, retention, currency, language

• Issue within six months of the supply — but by the 15th of the following month for an intra-EU supply or a reverse-charged service to another member state
• Keep invoices and books for 7 years, counted from the end of the calendar year the document belongs to — so a 2026 invoice can be destroyed from 1 January 2034
• Any currency is allowed, but the VAT amount must also appear in euros
• Any language is allowed; the tax office can require a translation of a document it is shown (§131 BAO)
• A cash register is separate from invoicing, and is required from €15,000 annual turnover with more than €7,500 of it in cash

Four places German advice gets Austria wrong

Half the Austrian invoicing pages on the web are German pages with the country name changed. These are the differences that actually bite:

• The statute is §11 UStG 1994, not §14 UStG. Citing the German paragraph on an Austrian invoice is the clearest sign a template was copied
• The number is a UID-Nummer (ATU plus eight digits), issued by Finanzamt Österreich on form U15 — not a Steuernummer, and nothing is issued by the Bundeszentralamt für Steuern
• Small invoices run to €400 gross here, not €250
• Records are kept for 7 years, not 8 — and Austria has no small-business e-invoicing exemption to be exempt from, because there is no B2B mandate to begin with

And if the customer sits in the third German-speaking direction: Switzerland follows neither system, which is the subject of the guide to invoicing in Switzerland.

The sources this page is built from

Every figure above comes from one of these, and they are the right places to check when something changes:

• USP — Formerfordernisse einer Rechnung — the statutory field list and the €10,000 recipient-UID rule, from the government's own business portal
• USP — Kleinunternehmen — the €55,000 threshold, the 10 percent tolerance and the EU scheme
• WKO — ermäßigte Umsatzsteuersätze — the rate table including the 4.9% list and its customs codes
• USP — Aufbewahrungspflicht — the seven-year retention rule and how the clock is counted
• e-Rechnung.gv.at — Rechtliche Grundlagen — the B2G mandate, the formats and the submission channels
• BMF — Invoicing — the finance ministry's own summary, in English
• EUR-Lex — Council Directive (EU) 2025/516 (ViDA) — the cross-border e-invoicing and reporting rules that apply from 1 July 2030, as adopted

Questions on Austrian invoicing rules