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MONEY

EXPLAINED: Everything you need to know about Austria’s climate bonus payment

Residents in Austria will receive up to €200 to compensate for the increase in energy and fuel prices created by the eco-social tax reform. Here's what you need to know.

Published: 20 May 2022 13:43 CEST
Updated: 26 May 2022 09:22 CEST
EXPLAINED: Everything you need to know about Austria's climate bonus payment
Austrian Minister for Climate Protection, Environment, Energy, Mobility, Innovation and Technology Leonore Gewessler. Photo: Alex Halada/AFP

The climate bonus, or Klimabonus in German, is an essential part of Austria’s eco-tax reform, a larger project with several measures to incentivise environmental choices such as riding the public transport.

The bonus would offset some of the costs brought by a new CO2 tax in Austria.

READ ALSO: Austrian government unveils ‘eco’ tax reform

“With the Klimabonus, we ensure that climate-friendly behaviour is rewarded and the people in our country are relieved. If you take good care of the climate, you pay less CO2 tax and end up having more of this money left”, Climate Minister Leonore Gewessler (Greens) said on Twitter.

The Austrian government plans to set up a web site with more information on the bonus in June. Until then, here is what you need to know about the new compensation and how to get it.

Who is entitled to the payment?

Anyone who has had their primary residence in Austria for at least 183 days will be entitled to the bonus. Children are also entitled, but if they are younger than 18 years old, they will receive 50 per cent of the respective amount of the climate bonus.

READ ALSO: EXPLAINED: How to get your €500 Kurzarbeit bonus in Austria

“This is the first time that all people, regardless of age, place of residence, regardless of employment or pension or training status, have received a federal payment,” said Gewessler on Friday in the Ö1 broadcast.

What is this ‘respective amount’?

Not everyone will receive the same amount of money. The value changes depending on where the recipient lives and what is the offer of public transport there. Viennese, then, will receive the lowest amount of money: a one-off € 100 payment.

READ ALSO: EXPLAINED: How to claim your €200 voucher for electronics repair in Austria

There are four levels of payment depending on the municipality: €100 for urban centres with the highest-ranking development (which is only Vienna), €233 for urban centres with good development of public transport, €167 in centres and surrounding areas with good basic development of the public system, and € 200 for rural municipalities.

If you live in Austria’s second-largest city, Graz, you fall into the second category and should expect a €133 bonus.

Some exceptions to the geographical rule apply, so people with disabilities who cannot use public transport will receive the total climate bonus (€200) regardless of where they live.

The Federal Government had already stated it estimated that a third of Austria’s population would receive the highest bonus.

How to get the bonus?

The payment is pretty straightforward; there is no need to apply for it, and it will be done directly into your bank account, just make sure that you have it up to date on the FinanzOnline website – the final date to do so is June 30th.

Those who receive a pension and other benefits will receive the bonus in that same bank account.

READ ALSO: EXPLAINED: How freelancers in Austria can pay four times less in social insurance

It is worth mentioning that the bank account doesn’t necessarily need to be from an Austrian bank.

People who don’t have a registered bank account will receive a letter with a voucher that can be redeemed in shops or exchanged for cash at a bank, Gewessler said.

According to the Ministry, payments should start at the beginning of October, and those receiving a transfer will not have to wait for long to see the money in their bank accounts. However, people receiving letters with the vouchers could have to wait a few weeks.

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WORKING IN AUSTRIA

Why are people in Austria paying more taxes despite federal reforms?

Workers in Austria are still among those with the highest tax burdens in the world, with the taxes and contributions taking more than 40 percent of wages even as the country introduced sweeping tax reforms.

Published: 26 April 2024 12:21 CEST
Why are people in Austria paying more taxes despite federal reforms?

It’s often said that Austria is a country with high quality of living and high taxes, but a new OECD study shows just how high the tax burden is here compared to other OECD countries.

According to the report, Austria has the third-highest tax burden on workers and the so-called “tax wedge”, how much of a worker’s wage is taken by the government,  increased as well.

According to the OECD, in most countries, the increase in labour taxation was primarily driven by increases in personal income tax.

This is because nominal wages increased in 37 out of 38 OECD countries as inflation remained above historic levels. However, since most of these countries do not have automatic indexation of tax systems, high inflation tends to increase workers’ tax liabilities by pushing them into higher tax brackets. 

However, Austria’s federal tax reforms removed this in the country in 2023. This means that once inflation rises, the tax brackets that define how much taxes you will pay on your income will also rise – and they have risen in 2023 and in 2024 since the change. 

The measure was known as the “end of the cold progression” in Austria and should have protected workers’ incomes from inflation losses.

READ ALSO: The tax benefits that parents and families receive in Austria

What is the tax ‘wedge’?

The OECD defines a tax wedge as “income tax plus employee and employer social security contributions, minus cash benefits.” 

In other words, if an employer has a labour cost of €100, how much will they actually see in their pockets, and how much of this goes to the state? According to the organisation, the percentage is the tax wedge.

In Austria, €100 earned by a single employee without children was taxed at an average of €47.2 last year. The amount was only smaller than in Germany (47.9 percent) and Belgium (52.7 percent) and it rose compared to the previous year when it was still at 46.9 percent.

The average of the 38 OECD countries was 34.8 percent.

Married single-earner couples with two children also have high tax burdens, with a tax wedge of 32.8 percent (OECD average: 25.7 percent), which is the eleventh-highest tax and contribution burden within the OECD for this group (2022: 13th place). For married dual-earner couples, the wedge was 40.6 percent.

The tax wedge for individuals or households with children is generally lower than those without children, as many OECD countries grant households with children a tax advantage or cash benefits.

READ ALSO: Why it’s worth filling in your annual tax return in Austria

Why is Austria’s tax burden higher this year?

Despite the tax reform presented by the government, Austria’s tax wedge has increased compared to the year before. 

The reason is the relief granted in Austria in 2022 in the form of one-off state payments. With the rising cost of living, the federal government released several temporary measures to help people in the country cushion the effects, including the popular €500 Klimabonus payment every person who had been a resident of Austria for at least six months was entitled to. 

These payments and increases in family allowances reduced the tax burden in 2022 – but they no longer exist or were drastically cut in 2023. Because of that, the tax burden is rising again. 

“The abolition of cold progression and the other measures have merely prevented the tax burden from rising more sharply,” Wifo economist Margit Schratzenstaller told Der Standard.

The report said the increased tax issues show that there is still a need for action. Compared to other industrialised countries, Austria’s tax burden on work for a single person without children is ten percentage points higher. Of course, the expert noted, the fact that many industrialised countries have a different social system with fewer publicly funded benefits also plays a role here. However, labour is also expensive in Austria compared to the EU average.

READ ALSO: What foreign residents in Austria should know about taxes

“The fact that the tax burden on the middle classes has increased is due to the government’s failure. Instead of structural relief, there have been one-off payments that have evaporated,” said Lukas Sustala, head of Neos-Lab, the think tank of the liberal opposition party.

NEOS representatives have urgently called for a ‘comprehensive tax reform’ to alleviate the heavy labour burden, with a significant reduction in non-wage labour costs, according to an ORF report.

In addition, NEOS proposes the creation of ‘tax incentives for full-time work’ – including a full-time bonus and tax exemption for overtime pay. Simultaneously, NEOS aims to eliminate ‘part-time incentives of any kind’, offering a potential boost to the economy and workers’ incomes.

Economist Schratzenstaller also recommends action: She suggests reducing social insurance contributions, for example, for health insurance companies. However, it’s important to note that intervening in this area could affect the largely autonomous financing of Austria’s healthcare system, which is funded mainly through workers’ and companies’ payments via social insurance contributions. 

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