Family Bonus Plus for Cross-Border Commuters: Review of an Austrian Employee Tax Assessment

A client liv­ing in Slo­va­kia com­mutes dai­ly to his work­place in Aus­tria. After the birth of his daugh­ter, he want­ed to know whether he could claim the Aus­tri­an Fam­i­ly Bonus Plus retroac­tive­ly through his Aus­tri­an employ­ee tax assess­ment. He had already pre­pared a draft in Finan­zOn­line and want­ed to make sure that the entries were cor­rect.

The client’s question

The client received an Aus­tri­an dif­fer­en­tial fam­i­ly allowance pay­ment for his child. How­ev­er, the Fam­i­ly Bonus Plus had not yet been con­sid­ered through pay­roll for the rel­e­vant year. The main ques­tion was there­fore whether this tax ben­e­fit could still be claimed retroac­tive­ly in the Aus­tri­an tax return.

Since the client lives in Slo­va­kia and works in Aus­tria, the cross-bor­der ele­ments also had to be reviewed. This includ­ed the E9 cer­tifi­cates and the infor­ma­tion entered for the spouse.

Our advice

Kobled­er TAX Advi­sors reviewed the client’s Finan­zOn­line draft and the sup­port­ing doc­u­ments pro­vid­ed. These includ­ed the Aus­tri­an fam­i­ly allowance con­fir­ma­tion, the child’s birth cer­tifi­cate and the family’s E9 cer­tifi­cates.

Our main rec­om­men­da­tions were:

• The Fam­i­ly Bonus Plus can gen­er­al­ly be claimed retroac­tive­ly for the rel­e­vant year, pro­vid­ed that the require­ments are met and the oth­er par­ent does not also claim it in Aus­tria.
• The Finan­zOn­line draft should be checked care­ful­ly to ensure that the cor­rect per­son is shown as receiv­ing the Aus­tri­an fam­i­ly allowance or dif­fer­en­tial pay­ment.
• The spouse’s income should be entered exact­ly as shown in the offi­cial E9 cer­tifi­cate.
• The sole earn­er tax cred­it can gen­er­al­ly remain in the draft if the per­son­al require­ments are met.
• In cross-bor­der com­muter cas­es, the appli­ca­tion to be treat­ed as sub­ject to unre­strict­ed tax lia­bil­i­ty in Aus­tria is often impor­tant so that per­son­al tax ben­e­fits can be tak­en into account.

We also pre­pared a graph­i­cal review doc­u­ment for the client. In this doc­u­ment, the rel­e­vant sec­tions of the Finan­zOn­line draft were high­light­ed and explained in sim­ple terms, show­ing what should be cor­rect­ed or checked before fil­ing.

Benefits for the client

The client received a clear assess­ment of which Aus­tri­an tax ben­e­fits were like­ly avail­able and which entries should be cor­rect­ed before sub­mis­sion.

This helped him to:

• avoid errors in the Finan­zOn­line draft,
• bet­ter under­stand his Aus­tri­an tax return,
• claim the Fam­i­ly Bonus Plus retroac­tive­ly,
• reduce the risk of fol­low-up ques­tions from the Aus­tri­an tax office,
• and ensure that the cross-bor­der infor­ma­tion matched the offi­cial sup­port­ing doc­u­ments.

For cross-bor­der com­muters, it is par­tic­u­lar­ly impor­tant that fam­i­ly ben­e­fits, for­eign income cer­tifi­cates and Aus­tri­an tax reliefs are han­dled con­sis­tent­ly. A focused tax review before fil­ing can cre­ate a notice­able finan­cial ben­e­fit and help avoid lat­er cor­rec­tions.