Cupiditas

The tax office wants to know exactly how much you‘ve earned (your earnings) and how much you‘ve had to spend for work (your expenses). Your taxes are then calculated from your annual profit, which is earnings minus expenses. As of July 1st 2014, the tax office distinguishes between self-employed sex work and employed sex workers. This distinction matters not only to the tax office but also for your insurance!
You are self-employed if you work in a walk-in broth- el or if you make house calls.In this case you have to make sure you are insured with the SVA yourself. However, if you work in a night club, especially if there‘s also a bar, you‘re employed.

You are self-employed and therefore need to get a tax number and must file an income tax statement. If your annual profit exceeds €11.000, you have to pay income tax. You can pay your income tax either beforehand or afterwards.

After you‘ve started working, you have up to a month to report to the tax office and get your tax number.

As a start, you just need to notify the tax office of your self-employment and get you tax number

For your income tax statement it is important to maintain a record of your earnings and expenses throughout the year. For this, you need to write down exactly how many customers you have, date and time and the respective earnings.
Expenses include everything you have to spend on work materials, your insurance contributions, travel expenses, rent for the room you work in, compulsory health check costs. You have to keep the receipts to be able to prove what you‘ve spent money on. You also have to keep all your records and receipts for 7 years since the tax office can ask you any time to produce them. If you don‘t keep records and the tax office wants to examine your records and you can‘t show them sufficient bills and receipts, they are allowed to estimate what you might have earned. This can be very expensive and you can also get fined for tax evasion.

If you don‘t have any receipts, then there is the possibility of using the basic flat rate. In that case you simply subtract 12% (this is the flat rate for your expenses) from your annual earnings . You then sub-

How much you have to pay depends on a few things. As already mentioned, you‘ve got 4 weeks time to notify the tax office about your self-employment. Once you earn more than €5.830 per year (2022) , you are obligated to take out insurance with the SVA. This insurance, then, covers health insurance, retirement pension insurance, accident insurance and provisions for self-employed persons.

The tax office passes on your income tax statement to the SVA which is how they know how much you‘ve earned and how much you have to pay for your in- surance. Your insurance payments depend on your earnings. The more you‘ve earned the more you have to pay. The good news is that this insurance includes a retirement pension insurance which means that you will get this money from that once you‘ve retired – even if you don‘t live in Austria anymore.

Taxes are a very complex topic! If you are unsure about something or if you have any further questions, don‘t hesitate to contact us!

It is true that insurance is compulsory in Austria, but only if your income is more than 5.830 € (as of 2022) a year. Above this annual income, you must pay SVA insurance payments as a self-employed person.

You are obligated to register with the SVA within four weeks of starting sex work. You must also register self-employment with the tax office within one month. When you turn in your income tax declaration to the tax office at the end of the year, then the SVA obtains the information about your income from the tax office. The more you earn, the higher your insurance payments will be.

The insurance covers illness, accident, and retirement, and also a provision for the self-employed. Your insurance coverage begins with the first day of work.

In the EU there are different agreements between Austria and other countries. Everything you pay into retirement insurance in Austria will be tallied with your pension in your country and/or with the retirement insurance you have paid in a different EU country. Here we recommend individual consultation, because there are many different points and it is a highly individual matter. If you want to receive a pension in Austria, you must pay into retirement insurance for a total of 180 months (15 years).

Even if you have an e-card in your country, you are not fully covered. You are insured in an emergency, but there are many treatments you have to pay (in part) yourself. In some cases, this can be very expensive. If you have health insurance through the SVA (which can also be on a voluntary basis), then you have to pay 20% of the treatment costs yourself.

The provision for the self-employed are payments that will be returned to you.

Then you still have to register with the SVA. You are not required to pay the mandatory insurance then. However, there is still the possibility of a voluntary insurance (“Opting-In”).