A short, honest guide to the Wiener Ortstaxe — what it is, how the 3.2% / 5% / 8% rate schedule works, and what the law really asks of paid-accommodation providers in Wien. Plus how Virtual Host AI computes it to the cent against Stadt Wien's official calculator.
The Wiener Ortstaxe (literally "local tax") is a municipal tourism levy charged on every paid overnight stay in Wien. It's defined by the Wiener Tourismusförderungsgesetz (WTFG) §11 and goes to Stadt Wien — specifically MA6 (Magistratsabteilung 6 — Finanzwesen) — to fund tourism infrastructure.
Hosts collect it from guests as part of the booking total, then remit it to MA6 quarterly via the Abgabenerklärung. The guest pays. The host files. The amount depends on net accommodation revenue, the current rate, and a few defined deductions.
The WTFG was amended in 2024. The rate steps up twice over the next two years.
Of net accommodation revenue. Includes a fixed 11% Pauschalabzug — a flat deduction for items not subject to the tax, applied at this tier only.
Of net accommodation revenue. Pauschalabzug drops away — the deduction logic simplifies.
Of net accommodation revenue. Same calculation logic as the 5% tier, scaled up.
Examples assume 10% VAT (the Wien short-term-rental standard rate) and no per-property deductions.
Only the Beherbergungsentgelt — the price the guest paid for accommodation. Everything else the booking includes is excluded by §11 WTFG.
When you connect your Smoobu API key, we read the price-elements for each booking and route each line item to the right column automatically. You don't decide what's deductible — the law does, and we apply it the same way Stadt Wien does.
Stadt Wien publishes its own Ortstaxe-Rechner on the official MA6 site. Most third-party calculators (and many spreadsheets) round differently and produce numbers that are 1-5 cents off — small individually, but they accumulate over a year of filings and the regulator will note the discrepancy.
Our calculator was reverse-engineered from the public Stadt Wien tool input-by-input. We use the same hardcoded factor lookup for every (rate × VAT) combination (7 active combinations in 2026), the same 11% Pauschalabzug at the 3.2% tier, and the same kaufmännisch rounding (round-half-up to 2 decimals at the final step). At every test input we've tried, we match Stadt Wien to the cent.
Schema-versioned (currently v7) — when Stadt Wien rolls the rate to 5% on 1 July 2026, we bump to v8 and every cached calculation invalidates so the next view recomputes with the new rate. No stale numbers in old reports.
Every quarter, every Wien host with paid overnight bookings owes an Abgabenerklärung — a sworn declaration of total Beherbergungsentgelt and Ortstaxe due. We generate the PDF in the format MA6 expects, with every booking listed in the appendix and the totals matched against the gross-revenue figures we pulled from Smoobu.
Two formats — pick what your Buchhaltung uses:
Per-property WTFG §11 deductions (e.g. for accommodation provided to long-term residents) are configurable in the dashboard. They flow into both PDF formats and the totals adjust automatically.
We're not tax advisors. The PDF we produce is a faithful representation of what you owe based on the data Smoobu provides; always have your Steuerberater sign off before submission.
For hosts who want the source-of-truth rate schedule and law text:
We're not tax advisors. This page describes how Wien Ortstaxe works at a high level and how our product computes it. Always confirm your specific obligations with your Steuerberater.
Connect Smoobu, fire the report, file with MA6. 14-day refund inside Austrian §11 FAGG.