found in austriaSVS: what you pay now — and the year-3 back-payment
SVS is your health + pension + accident insurance as a self-employed person. It's not optional, and it's the number-one source of nasty surprises for founders — entirely avoidable ones.
Who's in, from when
- Gewerbetreibende: insured automatically from the day of GISA registration.
- Neue Selbständige: insured once yearly profit crosses the insurance threshold (adjusted annually; around €6,600 in 2025). Crossing it is self-reported — file the Überschreitungserklärung with SVS, ideally in the same year. Reporting late costs a surcharge.
Note what's missing here: a registration form. For Gewerbetreibende there is none — GISA notifies SVS automatically, and the letters simply start arriving by post. If you prefer them digital, activate the inbox in svsGO, the SVS online portal (ID Austria login), and opt in to electronic delivery — the quarterly bills then land there instead of in your mailbox.
What it costs
Roughly 26–27% of profit, made up of pension (18.5%), health (6.8%), self-employed provision (1.53%) and a small fixed accident-insurance amount (~€12/month). There's a minimum contribution base, so even tiny or zero profits produce a floor payment: budget roughly €160–170 per month from day one (2025/26 values, adjusted every January). That's the number nobody mentions before you register — plan for ~€500 per quarter even before your first invoice.
The Nachbemessung — how the trap works
SVS can't know your profit in real time, so it bills you provisionally, often on the minimum base in your first years. Then your tax assessment for year 1 arrives — say, €30,000 profit — and SVS recalculates:
| Year | What happens | Cash effect |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | You pay small provisional quarterlies | feels cheap — beware |
| 2 | Tax return for year 1 filed | still quiet |
| 3 | SVS receives the year-1 assessment → back-payment for year 1 + raised current quarterlies | two bills at once, often €5,000+ |
One softener for Gewerbe founders: in the first two years, the health-insurance part stays fixed at the entry base (no retroactive recalculation) — the pension part is recalculated in full.
How to defuse it
- Put ~30% of every invoice aside from day one (separate account; pretend it doesn't exist).
- Or ask SVS to raise your provisional base voluntarily to match expected profit. Yes, you're volunteering to hand SVS money earlier than they'd ask for it — which sounds absurd until year 3, when the Nachbemessung letter arrives and yours reads €0. If surprise bills give you a headache, pre-paying reality is the cheapest sleep aid on this page.
- Big bill anyway? SVS routinely grants installment plans — call before the due date, never after.
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Try it free for 7 days →Status: 2026. Amounts and thresholds change (SVS values adjust yearly) — this is careful general information, not individual tax or legal advice. For your specific case, talk to a licensed Steuerberater.