What your records have to contain to survive a check by Bundesministerium für Finanzen, and the rate DriveHub applies.
€0.50 per km
In force 2025-01-01 onwards.
The Kilometergeldverordnung, BGBl. II Nr. 289/2024 — and it governs both the rate and the record. § 1 does not set the rate: it points at the Reisegebührenvorschrift 1955, where the 0,50 €/km lives. § 4 Abs. 2 caps a sole trader at 30 000 km in the Wirtschaftsjahr and § 5 Abs. 1 caps an employee at 30 000 km in the Kalenderjahr; § 2 sets what the record must contain; § 6 applies the whole thing to trips from 1 January 2025.
Nr. 133/1955, in der jeweils geltenden Fassung … vorgesehen ist".
And the two caps are two different windows, which is money. "30 000 km im Wirtschaftsjahr" for Betriebsausgaben against "30 000 km im Kalenderjahr" for Werbungskosten — one ordinance, two neighbouring sections, deliberately not the same year. A sole trader on an April business year who drove 20 000 km in November and 20 000 in February was paid for all 40 000: one Wirtschaftsjahr, 10 000 km over the cap, €5 000 claimed where €4 000 is allowed. The employee half was already right and stays untouched.
§ 2 Abs. 2, verbatim:
> Die Aufzeichnungen müssen jedenfalls beinhalten: Datum, Kilometerstand, Anzahl der betrieblich > oder beruflich zurückgelegten Tageskilometer, Ausgangs- und Zielpunkt sowie Zweck der jeweiligen > betrieblichen oder beruflichen Fahrt.
Zeitnah. A record reconstructed weeks later is what the authority attacks first; in RV/0528-F/10 it argued the logbook had been "nachgestellt".
Seven years, from the end of the calendar year the entries were made for — or, on a non-calendar business year, the calendar year in which it ends — plus as long as a pending proceeding needs them. BAO § 132 Abs. 1, unchanged since BGBl. I Nr. 28/1999. Seven, not Germany's ten, which is the trap for a reader who carries the number across a shared language. Austria also asks less of an electronic copy: § 132 Abs. 2 wants "vollständige, geordnete, inhaltsgleiche und urschriftgetreue Wiedergabe" and has no machine-evaluability requirement, so a rendered PDF goes further here than in Germany. An employee claiming Kilometergeld as Werbungskosten has no Aufzeichnungspflicht and so no § 132 period of their own; their horizon is the five-year assessment window (§ 207 Abs. 2). Failure to produce is a Schätzung (§ 184 Abs. 3).
The Kilometergeld is refused outright, as it was at first instance there.
The requirements above are quoted from Austria's own tax authority. DriveHub keeps them, and the rate, under version control and re-checks them against the authority's pages — this page is generated from that record, not written separately from it.
DriveHub records this automatically. It tracks each drive in the background, keeps the start and end, the distance and the route, and exports a report in the shape a tax office expects.