Registered Seat and Business Address in Vienna for a GmbH

Austrian GmbH law requires no general agent for service (Zustellbevollmächtigter). The Firmenbuch records the company's seat and, as a separate item, its business address relevant for service (§ 3 Abs. 1 Z 4 FBG). Official service goes to that address, which is why a Vienna address is filed as exactly this field.

The statute sets the test, not the type of address. Under § 5 Abs. 2 GmbHG the seat must be a place where the company has an operation, its management or its administration, and a deviation needs an important reason. Whether a particular address meets that test is for the registry court; we do not promise its view.

No statutory timeline is published for entering a seat or a business address in the Firmenbuch, so we do not quote one. The address for service is filed with the company's other register data as its own field (§ 3 Abs. 1 Z 4 FBG), and the seat decides which registry court handles the filing (§ 13 Abs. 1 UGB).

We do not publish prices; pricing is on request. What drives the cost is the scope you choose: a business address for the Firmenbuch alone, or a full virtual office with mail handling and forwarding. Send us the company details and the scope you need, and we reply with the arrangement and its terms.

The Sitz (seat) must be a place where the company has an operation, its management or its administration (§ 5 Abs. 2 GmbHG), and it decides the competent registry court. The Geschäftsanschrift is the business address relevant for service, entered in the Firmenbuch as a separate item (§ 3 Abs. 1 Z 4 FBG).

Only by way of exception. § 5 Abs. 2 GmbHG ties the seat to a place where the company has an operation, its management or its administration, and allows a deviation only for an important reason (aus wichtigem Grund). Whether a given reason is enough is not something we can promise in advance; the statute states the rule and the exception.

The seat determines the competent registry court. If the GmbH moves its seat within Austria, the move is notified to the court of the old seat, which transfers the file (§ 13 Abs. 1 UGB). The change of seat itself is one of the steps covered in how the articles of a GmbH are amended.

The Firmenbuch records it. Alongside the seat and the business address relevant for service, § 3 Abs. 1 Z 4a FBG provides for an entry of the fact that such an address is unknown. That entry sits on the company's register record, which is why the address for service is kept current whenever it changes.

Not in every case. Under § 39 Abs. 2a GewO the person needs a domicile in Austria unless they are an EEA national resident in an EEA state, or service and enforcement of administrative penalties are secured by agreement. The Business Service Portal restates the acceptable residence as Austria, an EEA state or Switzerland.

Every GmbH that exercises a trade does. A legal person must always appoint a gewerberechtlicher Geschäftsführer (trade-law managing director) to exercise a trade at all, according to the Business Service Portal. That person must be able to be present locally, so the question sits beside the address question for a company run from abroad.

A copy of an official photo ID. Under § 5 Abs. 2 WiEReG, where a beneficial owner is a natural person without a domicile in Austria, the company transmits a copy of that person's official photo identification electronically via the Business Service Portal (USP). It is an extra document duty that applies only to owners domiciled abroad.

The Firmenbuch, the Austrian companies register kept by the registry courts. For a GmbH it records, among other items, the seat and the business address relevant for service as two separate fields (§ 3 Abs. 1 Z 4 FBG), and it also records a finding that a company is a Scheinunternehmen, a sham company (§ 3 Abs. 1 Z 15a FBG).