Important updates regarding the research premium: consultation draft FoPR 2025

The Austrian Federal Ministry of Finance has published a consultation draft of the research premium guidelines 2025 (FoPR 2025) on 18 August 2025 – a significant step towards a clearer and more uniform application of legislation concerning the research premium.

What you need to know:

• • The new FoPR 2025 provide support for interpretation of legislation, however, no rights and obligations beyond the legal provisions may be derived from the guidelines;
  • The FoPR 2025 will replace previous statements in the Austrian Income Tax Guidelines (EStR) 2000 (margin note 8208 to margin note 8209k as well as appendix V);
  • In general, the guidelines are applicable for applications from the calendar year 2026;
  • In the course of tax audits, the FoPR 2025 are also applicable to previous time periods and to outstanding cases, if the EStR 2000 do not provide more favourable regulations;
  • The consultation period ends on 26 September 2025;

The new FoPR 2025 are significantly more comprehensive than the previous statements on the research premium included in the EStR 2000 and especially comprise key clarifications and concretisations such as regarding the definition and delimitation of R&D, eligible parties, in-house R&D and contract research, as well as regarding research cooperations and pharmaceutical research, details on the calculation of the assessment base up to rules of procedure for submitting applications, expert opinions by the Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG) and payments of the premium.

After the final guidelines are published, we will inform you promptly on the most important details in a separate newsletter.

Our experts are happy to support you in case of questions regarding the research premium or other grants.

You may find our newsletters on grants on our homepage in the chapter “Newsticker” (in German only).

Authors: Daniela Stastny, Cornelia Kalina