Do your tax return

Understand the employee tax assessment

Your employer deducts wage tax every month as if you earned the same all year. With the employee tax assessment the tax office recalculates the year. Often you get money back, for example after changing jobs or if you did not work the whole year. There is a voluntary assessment and a mandatory one. The rules generally also apply to EU citizens. No tax is calculated here.

Wait for the automatic refund

If you file nothing for the previous year by the end of June, the tax office can assess you without an application. This only happens if the data show wages only and the refund is at least five euros. You get an information letter first. The refund arrives in the second half of the year. It does not come if the tax office assumes you still want to deduct expenses, or if it does not know your account. Unpaid tax debts are offset against it.

Set up access to FinanzOnline

FinanzOnline is the online portal of the tax administration. The easiest way to log in is with ID Austria, your digital ID on your phone. Without ID Austria there is the online first registration: you enter your name, address and the number of an ID document. The access data then come by RSa letter, a letter only you may accept in person. If that does not work, you hand in form FON 1 at the tax office in person. With older access data you must set up two-factor login. Enter your ID number only in FinanzOnline.

Fill in and send the application in FinanzOnline

In FinanzOnline you fill in the employee tax assessment return and send it. This is the fastest way. You do not upload receipts or pay slips. Your employer sends the pay slip itself. You enter children, foreign income and extraordinary expenses in the matching parts, like in the paper supplements L 1k, L 1i and L 1ab.

Enter expenses and tax credits

You can enter four kinds of items. Work-related expenses (Werbungskosten) are costs for your job, such as training. Special expenses (Sonderausgaben) are certain private costs, such as donations or church contributions. Organisations often report these themselves; check them in FinanzOnline. Extraordinary expenses are special private costs, such as for illness. Tax credits include the Familienbonus Plus or the sole earner and single parent credit. Do not attach receipts. Keep them for seven years, because the tax office can ask for them.

Wait for the tax assessment notice

The tax office handles applications in the order they arrive. It needs all annual pay slips, including reports from the AMS. Calling does not speed it up. If you use FinanzOnline, the notice arrives in your Databox, your electronic mailbox there. You get an email about it.

Check the notice you received

The notice is the tax office’s decision. Check whether all jobs, expenses, children and your account are right. If it was an automatic notice and you still want to deduct something, file a return within five years. The tax office then cancels the automatic notice. If you had other income that year, such as rent, you need an income tax return E 1.