UNOS – Entrepreneurial Austria adopted their campaign program for the 2025 Chamber of Commerce elections at their general meeting on November 15, 2024 in Vienna. Under the title “sowasvonfrei” a package of measures was put together to provide more relief and less bureaucracy.
“We want an Austria where people enjoy starting companies and have a real chance to grow. They should have the opportunity to do what they do best: serve customers and develop new products and services. Instead, they have to fight their way through a jungle of bureaucracy and are crushed by taxes and fees,” said UNOS federal spokesman Michael Bernhard.
“We have a clear vision,” says UNOS Federal Spokesman Markus Hofer: “A country in which entrepreneurship can be lived in freedom and with joy. A country with an entrepreneur representation that also deserves the name: service-oriented, unbureaucratic and without compulsory membership.”
With their program, UNOS advocates for an Austria in which entrepreneurs are not discouraged with taxes that are uniquely high in Europe, but can live and work in a culture of appreciation and recognition – regardless of their origin, political orientation or networks and also independently of their gender and their sexual self-definition.
Relieve companies now
The key points in the new program are therefore a relief offensive and the area of work and family.
“We need tax cuts through a tariff reform in which the middle and upper tax brackets start significantly later. There needs to be incentives for companies that use equity capital to prepare themselves for growth and/or bad times. And we have to make performance more attractive again. In return, we are demanding a full-time bonus and tax exemption on overtime,” says Hofer.
A key point for UNOS is the reduction of non-wage labor costs by eliminating all non-employee-related taxes, such as the employer contribution to the family burden equalization fund or the chamber levy 2. Hofer: “This creates scope for higher wages and salaries. Where necessary, the costs should be transferred to the general budget.”
Support for self-employed people with children
Bernhard criticizes the fact that too little attention is paid to entrepreneurs in family, economic and tax policy. In addition to the expansion of childcare facilities, UNOS are therefore calling for a childcare benefit system for the self-employed. “Part of the two billion that the Chamber of Commerce is currently leaving unused as reserves can be used for this purpose. In order to make it easier for young couples to become entrepreneurs, we are calling for significantly expanded deductibility of childcare costs and a more comprehensive and practical childcare allowance system for the self-employed.”
The goal of UNOS is modern, liberal and non-discriminatory entrepreneurship. “The time is ripe to create the conditions for this in Austria too!” concluded Bernhard.
UNOS – Entrepreneurial Austria has represented the interests of liberal-minded entrepreneurs since 2014 and is present in five economic parliaments.