Leaving Austria for good: the financial exit checklist

What leaving changes, and what it doesn’t

Most people treat deregistration as the moment they leave Austria on paper. For tax, what counts is the home: Austria taxes your worldwide income for as long as you keep a home here you can use, whatever the registration record says. Give up the flat and you drop to limited liability, taxed only on income with an Austrian connection.

Three things follow from the move itself. Your health cover through a job ends when the job does, according to the Austrian health insurance fund’s page on the end of compulsory insurance (in German). Your pension months stay on record in Austria, and nothing is refunded.

The third catches the most people: investments you haven’t sold can be taxed as if you had, on the day you leave.

Everything below covers the Austrian side only. The country you’re moving to will have its own registration, tax and social insurance rules, and its own authorities are the place to check them.

The checklist at a glance

Step	When	Where
Deregister your address	Within 3 days before or after giving up the home	Any registration office
Decide what happens to the flat	Notice runs 1 to 3 months or more, depending on the lease	Your landlord, in writing
Tell the tax office your unlimited tax liability has ended	Within 1 month of the move	Finanzamt Österreich (the federal tax office), in FinanzOnline or in writing
Stop family allowance	Within 1 month of the move	Finanzamt Österreich
Declare exit tax on investments, and apply for deferral if moving within the EU/EEA	In the income tax return for the year you leave	Finanzamt Österreich
File an employee tax assessment for the part-year	Any time up to 5 years after that year ends	FinanzOnline or paper form
Check your severance fund balance	Before you go, then when you can draw it	Your Betriebliche Vorsorgekasse (severance fund)
Close or pause a business	Before or at the move	Trade authority, SVS, tax office
Keep or close bank accounts	Any time	Your bank

Deregistering your address (Abmeldung)

The Abmeldung (deregistration) is due within 3 days before or after you give up the home, and you can file it at any registration office, not only the one where you registered. The government’s page on registering and deregistering an address (in German) sets out the process. Missing the deadline is an administrative offence, with a fine of up to EUR 726 for a first breach.

The 3-day window runs both ways, so you can deregister before the removal van leaves rather than from abroad afterwards. That’s usually the simpler order.

Your tax position in the year you leave

The year you leave is split in two. Up to the day you give up your Austrian home (and any habitual stay here), you’re taxed on your worldwide income; after it, only on income with an Austrian connection. Nothing about the split needs an application, but the tax office does need to hear about it.

Under the tax procedure code’s reporting duty (in German), you have to tell the tax office within 1 month of any change that starts, alters or ends your personal tax liability, and giving up your Austrian home is one.

For employees, the wage tax your employer withheld each month assumed the salary would carry on all year. The finance ministry’s overview of the employee tax assessment (in German) explains that the assessment recalculates the tax and spreads it evenly over the year, which is why someone who worked only part of it often gets money back. You can file it up to 5 years after the end of the year concerned, so leaving doesn’t close the window.

Some leavers have to file rather than choose to. Anyone with a gain to declare under the exit tax rules below needs an income tax return for the year of departure, because that’s where the gain is reported and where any deferral is applied for.

How income you earn abroad after the move affects the Austrian side of that year depends on the tax treaty with your new country and on the facts of the case. That’s the point where the general rule runs out and a licensed tax adviser takes over.

Exit tax on shares, funds and crypto

Austria treats leaving as a sale. When a move ends or restricts Austria’s right to tax gains on your investments, the rules deem shares, fund units, bonds, derivatives and cryptocurrency to have been sold at their market value on the day you leave, according to the finance ministry’s page on realised capital gains (in German). The gain is that value minus what you paid, taxed at the special rate of 27.50%.

Cash in a savings account has no gain, so it isn’t caught. In most permanent moves the new country gains the right to tax your future capital gains under the treaty, and that’s the restriction that triggers the charge. What happens next depends on where you’re going.

Moving to another EU or EEA state. You can apply in the return for the year of departure for Nichtfestsetzung (deferral): the tax is worked out in the assessment but not collected until you actually sell. A later move from there to a country outside the EU/EEA also counts as a sale and brings the deferred tax due.

Moving anywhere else. The deferral isn’t available, and the instalment option the finance ministry describes covers only other situations within the EU/EEA. That includes Switzerland and the UK, which catches people who assume “Europe” is the test (it’s EU/EEA membership). The tax is assessed with the rest of the departure year and paid like any other assessment.

Where an Austrian bank holds the investments

If you tell your Austrian bank about the move, the same ministry page says the exit gain becomes subject to withholding at the bank, but the bank only deducts the tax when you later sell or take the securities out of the account. You can stop that later deduction altogether by showing the bank the tax office’s decision on the exit tax, so the tax is dealt with once, through your return.

Moving the holdings to a broker abroad is a separate event. A transfer out of an Austrian account counts as a sale unless it fits one of the exceptions on that page, such as a transfer to your own account abroad where the old bank reports your details to the tax office.

The annual proof for larger deferrals

Austrian law now adds a reporting duty on top of the deferral, in the capital gains section of the Income Tax Act (in German). Where the deferred gains in a year total more than EUR 100,000, you must show the tax office every year that nothing has happened to trigger the tax. The proof is due by the end of the following year, with your current address, in writing or through FinanzOnline.

Miss it and the law treats that as a sale, so the deferred tax falls due. The duty applies to deferrals granted in decisions made after 30 June 2026. Deferrals decided before 1 July 2026 where the deferred amount is over the same threshold need a first proof by 31 December 2026, and then one every year.

For anyone with a sizeable portfolio, the deferral application and the proof duty are where the money is, and both depend on dates and facts specific to the move. That’s work for a licensed tax adviser, ideally before the moving date rather than after it.

Your Austrian pension months

The months you’ve paid into the Austrian pension system stay on your Pensionskonto (individual pension account) after you leave. The Pensionsversicherungsanstalt (PVA, the pension insurance institution) refunds contributions only in narrow cases, according to its glossary of pension terms (in German), such as pay above the contribution ceiling, and leaving Austria isn’t among the cases it lists, so there’s nothing to claim back at the exit. What matters is whether those months will ever turn into a pension.

Question	The rule
How much insurance do you need for an Austrian old-age pension?	180 months (15 years), of which at least 84 months (7 years) from work, for people born from 1 January 1955
Do months in other countries count toward that?	Months in the EU/EEA, Switzerland and countries with a social security agreement count toward eligibility
Do they increase the Austrian pension?	No. Austria calculates its pension only on its own months
Where do you apply?	Usually in the country where you live when you retire
Can it be paid abroad?	Almost anywhere, apart from countries under payment embargoes

The minimum period comes from the PVA’s page on the old-age pension (in German), and the counting rules from its page on pensions across borders (in German). The PVA’s page on Austrian pensions paid abroad (in German) adds that most recipients living outside Germany and Croatia must send a Lebensbestätigung (proof of life) each year, or payment stops.

For someone moving to another EU state, a few Austrian years usually aren’t wasted: the months add up with the new country’s toward each country’s eligibility test, and each pays its own share. For someone moving to a country with no social security agreement with Austria, Austrian months only count toward the 180 on their own, and a short Austrian career may never reach it.

Your severance fund balance (Abfertigung neu)

Employers pay a share of every employee’s pay into a Betriebliche Vorsorgekasse (company severance fund), under the system called Abfertigung neu (the new severance scheme). The balance is yours, but how and when you can take it out depends on how the job ended. The rules are set out on the business service portal’s page on the severance scheme (in German).

You can take the balance as a payout when the employment ends, provided contributions have been paid for at least 3 years and the job didn’t end by your own resignation, an unjustified early departure, or a dismissal that was your fault. Ending by mutual agreement, by the employer’s notice or at the end of a fixed term all qualify. Resign, and the balance stays invested in the fund.

The balance doesn’t stay locked for ever: under the severance fund law’s rules on access (in German), you can ask for it once no contributions have been due for you for at least 5 years, provided you’re not in an employment relationship at the time. This route works however the job ended and whatever the length of contributions, resignation included. A payout is taxed at 6 %, according to the Income Tax Act’s rules on severance payments (in German); moving it to a pension insurer or pension fund for a lifelong pension is tax-free.

Family allowance

Familienbeihilfe (family allowance) depends on the family living in Austria: the parent’s centre of life and the child’s permanent stay both have to be here, as the Federal Chancellery’s page on family allowance across borders (in German) explains. When the whole family moves away, entitlement normally ends.

You have to tell the Finanzamt Österreich within 1 month of learning of anything that ends the entitlement, and of any change of address, under the family allowance law’s reporting duty (in German). Allowance paid after the entitlement ended can be reclaimed, so a late report usually means paying money back rather than a fine.

One arrangement changes the picture. If a parent keeps working in Austria while the family moves to another EU or EEA state, or to Switzerland, EU coordination rules can keep Austria responsible for paying, with the other country topping up any difference. Which country pays turns on each parent’s work and insurance, and the Finanzamt Österreich decides it case by case.

Your flat: notice and deposit

How fast you can leave a rented flat depends on the lease and on whether the Tenancy Act (Mietrechtsgesetz, MRG) covers it, which is the question landlords, tenant associations and courts all start from. The government’s page on tenants giving notice (in German) sets out the main cases:

• Open-ended lease: usually 1 month’s notice to the end of a month, unless the contract says otherwise.
• Fixed-term lease covered by the MRG: after the first 1 year, you can end it early with 3 months’ notice to the end of a month.
• Fixed-term lease outside the MRG: it may run until it expires, with early exit only on serious grounds.

Notice must be in writing, and the same page suggests registered post with proof of delivery. Once you’ve handed the flat back properly, the landlord has to repay the deposit without delay.

Accounts and property you keep

Nothing forces you to close an Austrian bank account when you move. Once you’re tax resident elsewhere, though, Austrian banks report the account’s details and balance to the Austrian tax authority each year, which passes them to your new country under the Common Reporting Standard, as the finance ministry’s information on the reporting system (in German) describes. The bank will need your new address and tax residence to do that.

Property is different. Keep an Austrian flat you can still use and you probably keep your Austrian tax residency with it, which undoes most of the point of the move for tax. If you let it out instead, the rent stays taxable in Austria after you’ve left, and so does the gain if you later sell, under Austrian income tax law’s list of Austrian-source income (in German).

There’s one narrow carve-out for keeping a holiday home. Once the centre of your life has been abroad for more than 5 calendar years, an Austrian home used on no more than 70 days a year, with a written log of those days, doesn’t make you tax resident again.

If you’re self-employed

A trade licence holder closes down by returning the licence to the trade authority, and the business service portal’s page on closing a sole proprietorship (in German) warns that the return is irrevocable once the authority receives it. Compulsory insurance with the SVS (social insurance for the self-employed) ends on the last day of the month in which the last licence ends.

The SVS has to be told within 1 month of a change that ends compulsory insurance, although the trade authority usually passes it on. The tax office has to be told within 1 month as well, under the same reporting duty as the move itself. Closing a business raises its own tax questions (a final profit, VAT, assets taken into private use), and those depend on the business.

Two groups the general answer may not fit

Once exit tax, a kept property or a second country’s claim comes into it, the timing of each step can change the bill, and the general rules above are only the starting point. In Austria, individual tax advice is reserved for licensed Steuerberater (licensed tax advisers), and the tax advisers’ chamber keeps an online register of its members (in German) for checking who is authorised.

Official sources

• Registering and deregistering an address (An- und Abmeldung des Wohnsitzes), oesterreich.gv.at, in German
• Realised capital gains (Substanzgewinne bzw. Einkünfte aus realisierten Wertsteigerungen), Federal Ministry of Finance, in German
• Income Tax Act 1988, capital gains and the exit rules, RIS consolidated text, in German
• Pensions across borders (Zwischenstaatliche Pensionsversicherung), Pensionsversicherungsanstalt, in German
• The new severance scheme for employees (Abfertigung NEU), Austrian business service portal (USP), in German
• Family allowance across borders (Familienbeihilfe, grenzüberschreitende Sachverhalte), Federal Chancellery, in German