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In principle, significantly lower social security contributions are payable for marginally employed persons than for other employees. If the remuneration of each individual marginally employed person does not exceed € 518.44 and the total of all marginally employed persons together does not exceed 1.5 times this limit, the social security contributions are only € 2.63%. If the factor of 1.5 is exceeded, it used to be 16.4%. The latter has now been significantly increased to 19.4% as of 2024. From an employer's perspective, it is now less profitable to employ several people on a marginal basis.

The tax-neutral benefit in kind in the form of employer subsidies for childcare is not new, but has been significantly improved. Firstly, the maximum amount of tax-exempt allowances has been doubled to € 2,000. Secondly, the age of the child to be cared for has been raised to 14. What has not changed is the requirement that it must be pedagogically qualified staff who look after the child and that this benefit in kind must always be granted to all or at least a group of employees, whereby the group can also be delimited according to social characteristics - for example, employees with children! 

If employees are granted options, it has previously been assumed that the employee has already been enriched if the option is freely disposable and can therefore be transferred to any third party. The option therefore had to be valued and the value evaluated as ‘dry income’ had to be subject to income tax and all other payroll taxes at the time it was granted. In a recent case, the VwGH (Administrative Court of Austria) ruled that the enrichment of the employee only occurs when the option is exercised, regardless of whether the employee was able to sell it earlier or not. If the company value remains the same, this can represent an advantage, as taxation only occurs much later, namely when the option is exercised. If, on the other hand, the value increases, the increase in value is taxed at the higher value at the time of exercise. This model has therefore become even less attractive for successful start-ups....

A managing director received a high severance payment at the end of his employment, which was also taxed at a correspondingly high rate. Shortly afterwards, however, in the following calendar year, when the former managing director no longer earned any significant income, it transpired that this bonus had been wrongly received and he had to repay it. While the receipt of the bonus was therefore subject to full taxation, the repayment of this bonus could not be offset in any way under tax law and therefore could not be utilised. The VwGH (Administrative Court of Austria) granted the managing director's applications in a legal dispute concerning a review procedure due to the overriding consequence of the accrual principle. As the rigid adherence to the inflow principle in the case of income from employment leads to a material inequity under tax law through no fault of the managing director, the repayment of the bonus could exceptionally also be attributed to the year in which it was originally granted, after which the inflow and ‘outflow’ could be offset against each other.