Vetting an EOR for Austria: the questions that reveal real expertise

Vetting an EOR for Austria is less about brochures than about asking questions that only a provider who runs Austrian payroll every month can answer without hesitation. Austrian employment has several features that do not exist in most other systems: pay floors set by sector agreements rather than by statute, fourteen salary payments, a severance fund fed from the second month, and a single joint audit of all payroll levies. A provider that is vague on any of these is telling you something.

Before you send the first question, write down the facts of your hire: job title, city, gross annual pay, weekly hours, start date and whether the person will work remotely. Give every provider the same brief. That turns their answers into something you can compare line by line, rather than three sales conversations you half remember.

Some answers should make you cautious straight away. A provider that cannot say who signs the contract and whose employer account the hire is registered under has not thought the arrangement through. One that quotes a monthly salary times twelve has not met the Austrian pay system. And one that promises results the law does not allow, such as a two-month probation or a non-compete for a junior role, will cost you more later than it saves now.

It also helps to be clear about what an EOR is supposed to take on. If you need a refresher, our explainer on what an EOR does in Austria sets out the division of work between you and the employer of record.

Ask each provider which Kollektivvertrag (collective agreement) and which grade it would apply to your role, and why. Austria has no statutory minimum wage; more than 800 sector agreements cover 98% of employees and set the floors instead. The answer should name an agreement and a grade, not a range of possibilities.

Then test whether the provider follows changes. A good question for a technology hire is how it applied the 2026 round of the IT collective agreement. Minimum salaries in that agreement rose by between 2.7% and 3.1%, backdated to 1 January 2026, and actual salaries had to rise by 2.75% by 1 July 2026 at the latest. A provider that runs Austrian payroll should know both figures and should be able to say whether its existing employees received the second increase.

Finally, ask how the two special payments are handled. The holiday bonus and the Christmas bonus come from the collective agreement, not from statute, and the agreement sets their amount and timing. A proposal that budgets twelve salaries, or that treats the extra two as an optional bonus, has misread the system.

The quickest way to judge payroll competence is to ask for a full cost calculation and check it against a known result. Use our worked example: a white-collar employee in Vienna, single, on €60,000 gross in 2026, paid 14 × €4,285.71. The employer cost should land at about €77,805 before any EOR fee, and the employee’s net at about €41,102. Commercial payroll software can differ by a few euros through rounding; a gap of hundreds of euros means something is missing.

Look for these items in the breakdown:

• Two employer social insurance rates, not one: 20.98% for the ordinary months and 20.48% for the 13th and 14th salaries, the lower figure because the Chamber of Labour levy and housing contribution do not apply to special payments.
• A severance fund line at 1.53%, charged on every euro paid including the bonuses, uncapped, and starting once the first month of employment is over.
• The Dienstgeberbeitrag at 3.7%, the surcharge on it for the relevant federal state (0.36% in Vienna), and Kommunalsteuer at 3%.
• If the job is in Vienna, the city’s U-Bahn-Steuer: €2 a week per employee, where any week that has started counts in full.
• A note on the contribution ceiling of €6,930 a month in 2026, which matters for senior salaries, and ideally the confirmed 2027 figure of €7,410.

If you want the long version of the arithmetic, our breakdown of the full cost of an employee in Austria walks through each line.

Austrian payroll runs to dates that do not move. Ask the provider to describe its process for each of them and what happens when something slips.

• Registration: through ELDA, before the employee starts work. Ask when in the onboarding sequence the provider files it and how it confirms receipt.
• Monthly return: the mBGM to the ÖGK, alongside wage tax, DB and its surcharge, which the tax office collects, and the Kommunalsteuer that the local council levies. Each is payable by day 15 of the following month.
• Annual return: the Lohnzettel L16, sent through ELDA no later than the last day of February, and the Kommunalsteuer annual return by 31 March.

Ask, too, who pays if a deadline is missed. Late reports cost €70 each in 2026, and an unregistered worker found on inspection triggers €1,000 in surcharges. The answer tells you whether the provider expects to absorb its own mistakes or pass them on.

Then ask about audits. Every Austrian employer goes through a joint audit of wage tax, DB, DZ, Kommunalsteuer and social insurance roughly every three to five years, run either by the ÖGK or by the tax authority’s audit service. A provider that has employed people in Austria for a while will have been through one. How it describes the experience, and what it changed afterwards, is more informative than any claim on its website.

Request a sample employment contract and a sample Dienstzettel (written statement of terms) for a role like yours. Its required content grew on 28 March 2024, when the EU transparency rules arrived. A compliant sample now covers the employer’s registered seat and a summary of duties alongside the older items, and it adds the termination procedure, the overtime rate, the probation length, plus the names of the employee’s health insurer and severance fund. Penalties for a missing or incomplete statement range from €100 to €436, or €500 to €2,000 in aggravated cases. Check the sample covers these points.

Read the probation clause: one month is the legal maximum. If the sample has a non-compete, check three limits. The 2026 pay threshold is €4,620 gross in the last month, and below it the clause has no effect. Twelve months is the ceiling on its length. And an employer that dismisses the person loses the protection of the clause, except where the employee’s own conduct caused the dismissal. A sample that ignores these limits suggests the provider uses a template written for another country.

Then ask how an exit would work. The provider should be able to explain employer notice of six weeks rising with service, the default that notice runs out only at the close of a calendar quarter (and the contract clause that can add mid-month and month-end dates), the one-week consultation with a works council where one exists, the employee’s two weeks to challenge a dismissal in court, and the severance fund in place of a lump sum. If any of that needs to be looked up, note it.

Two rarer scenarios are worth one question each. Some employees, among them pregnant women, parents on Karenz or the fathers’ month, and works council members, can only be dismissed with court consent or not at all. And a company planning several dismissals within 30 days may have to notify the AMS at least 30 days before giving notice, or the dismissals are void. You may never need either rule, but a provider that knows them is less likely to be surprised by the common cases.

Ask for one monthly price per employee and a list of everything that is billed on top. Typical extras to ask about are fees for contract amendments, for terminations, for onboarding, for payroll corrections, and any foreign-exchange margin if you are invoiced in a currency other than euros. Ask what notice applies if you end the service and how the employee is treated in that case.

For our part, the monthly fee starts at €599 for each person employed. Compare like with like: a lower headline figure with extras for every change can cost more over a year than a single all-in price, and a quote that leaves out the special payments will look cheaper than one that includes them.

To put the fee in proportion, take the €60,000 Vienna example again. Statutory employer costs come to about €77,805 a year. A monthly charge starting at €599 adds €7,188, bringing the annual total to roughly €84,993. When you compare providers, compare that total, not the fee on its own, because a provider that gets the payroll wrong can cost you more than any difference in fees.

Price is not the only test, but it is a revealing one. A provider that can tell you exactly what a year will cost, including the two extra salaries and every levy, has usually thought about the rest too. Our comparison of EOR providers in Austria sets out how we answer each of these questions ourselves.

Two practical topics separate providers who have employed people in Austria from those who have only quoted for it. The first is remote work. Regular work from home or another agreed place has needed a written telework agreement under the Telework Act, in force from the start of 2025, and the same rules let the employer pay a small allowance free of wage tax for up to 100 days a year. Ask whether the provider’s contract pack includes that agreement as standard.

The second is hiring from outside the EU. The Rot-Weiß-Rot-Karte (Red-White-Red Card) is employer-specific, valid for 24 months and checked by the AMS, and the other-key-worker route needs at least €3,465 gross a month in 2026. Ask whether the provider handles such cases, how it has done so before, and what it will need from you. A clear answer either way is useful; a promise that everything is simple is not.

When the answers are in, score them against your brief rather than against each other. If you are ready to see how we would answer them, Employer of Record Austria will take your brief and reply in writing, and our onboarding sequence shows what happens once you choose.