International airline tickets are not subject to taxation due to numerous international agreements. Austria's Transport Minister Leonore Gewessler (Greens) has announced that in future there will no longer be any sales tax on cross-border rail traffic. The ÖBB promise that the savings should be passed on to the customers.

It is not particularly logical at the moment: If you take the train from Vienna to Munich, then the Austrian sales tax is due on the Austrian section and the tax office of the Federal Republic applies to the German section. But if you fly by plane, the tax authorities of both countries get nothing. International agreements that were concluded decades ago make it possible.

The Austrian government wants to lower prices for international train journeys as part of the Tax Amendment Act 2022, which is currently being examined. To this end, they should be exempt from sales tax. The tax for the Austrian part of the route is currently ten percent. If the project is approved by the National Council and the Federal Council, the change should come into force on January 1, 2023.

It should be noted that the abolition of sales tax for international train journeys only affects the Austrian part of the journey. For the foreign parts, ÖBB and private competitors must then continue to calculate and pay the respective national tax. Whether other countries will join is currently not foreseeable.

ÖBB boss Andreas Matthä explained, among other things: "The abolition of sales tax on cross-border train tickets in Austria is an important step towards making train travel in Europe more attractive and achieving a little more equal opportunities between the different modes of transport".

Transport Minister Leonore Gewessler (Greens) wants to make night train connections cheaper with the tax change. For the time being, however, this only applies to kilometers traveled in Austria. At EU level, they want to work to ensure that as many members as possible join. The purpose of the measure is that the railways will be put on the same level as air traffic for tax purposes.

However, the project can also lead to fierce resistance elsewhere: while aviation will hardly be bothered by the fact that train tickets are to be made a little cheaper, long-distance bus operators are likely to be furious. It is expressly not intended that cross-border bus tickets will also be tax-privileged. For the Austrian section of the route, the ten percent sales tax must also be paid after January 1, 2023. Considering the fact that in recent years - apart from a corona-related break - the long-distance bus market has grown extremely strongly throughout Europe, one can assume that there could be one or the other lawsuit due to alleged discrimination.