On 8 November 2021, the Austrian Ministry of Finance has proposed a draft bill on the ecosocial tax reform 2022 and submitted it for consideration by the parliament and the Federal Council. Subsequently, the corporate tax rate will reduce from 25% to 24% in 2023 and from 24% to 23% in 2024. A carbon tax on CO2 emissions will be introduced from July 2022 at EUR 30 per tonne; the carbon tax will be gradually increased to EUR 35 per tonne from 2023 to EUR 45 from 2024 and to EUR 55 as from 2025.
The bill also includes the following changes:
- Introduction of a 10% investment allowance available as an additional business expense in order to create incentives for ecological business investments. Accordingly, a tax allowance for certain investments amounting to 10% of the acquisition or production costs will be implemented; for investments in the field of ecologization, the tax allowance is increased to 15%.
- An increase in the profit allowance on the basic amount of EUR 30,000 from 13% to 15% with effect from 1 January 2022;
- An increase in the amount for immediately deductible low-value assets from EUR 800 to EUR 1,000 with effect from 1 January 2023; and
- Introduced a preferential treatment for employee profit participations. The bill provides for an exemption of profit participations for employees of up to EUR 3,000 per year. The exemption applies to profit participations granted from 1 January 2022 onwards.
