You had your Austrian house constructed and later rented out part of it. Now it is to be sold. The thought "self-built, therefore tax-free" is too simplistic for reliable preparation. The manufacturer exemption (Herstellerbefreiung) is a specific tax provision with its own scope. This article helps to organise the facts necessary for that; it does not determine any exemption and does not calculate any tax.
State the legal question precisely
§ 30 Absatz 2 Ziffer 2 EStG 1988 refers to self-constructed buildings held in private assets, provided they have not been used to generate income within the last ten years. [ESTG-30] Even this wording separates construction, asset allocation and use into distinct issues to be examined. This article does not conclusively clarify who counts as the manufacturer in a particular construction arrangement.
Our editorial recommendation: obtain the land purchase documents, building contracts, invoices and completion documents. Describe which services you actually organised and bore. Mere recollection of having helped with some tasks will not be treated as conclusive tax qualification as the manufacturer.
Create a usage timeline tied to the building
Order the use according to time and spatial extent. Which parts were self-occupied, rented out or used otherwise? Are there addenda or alterations that shifted the covered area? Link the information to existing rental and tax documents.
Unclarified periods remain explicitly open. A registration date alone does not describe every actual use of an entire house. Likewise, the use of a single unit is not automatically attributed to all other areas.
An illustrative case with a rented upper floor
An owner had a house built and later rented out the upper floor. While preparing the sale she only recalls the last rental period. Earlier documents show another income use in a different period.
She therefore does not prepare a private exemption certificate. She provides the full timeline and the affected building extent to her tax advisor. They should examine the actually applicable exemption and the required allocation. The example provides neither a particular outcome nor a generally valid proportion.
Do not equate the building with the rest of the sale object without examination
The mentioned exemption refers to self-constructed buildings. For the specific overall transaction, land, other components and further possible factual elements must be professionally classified separately. The article does not combine a possible building exemption into an automatic tax-free status for the entire purchase price.
Ask for a comprehensible presentation of what was examined: person, object extent, temporal reference and relevant documents. If the advice requires further information, assign obtaining it to a specific open point.
Plan ahead with the examined result
For your available sale proceeds, first apply the individually classified tax position or continue to mark it as open. An expected exemption should not be treated as a guaranteed zero in planning while construction and use remain unclear.
Preparation should not mean amassing as many invoices as possible. It should be able to answer the specific question of which self-constructed building parts were used in what period and in what way. Only on that basis can the tax advisor examine the actual sale.