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Retail and service providers in Austria will have to close again on January 28. Here is an overview of the assistance that affected businesses can request:
Income replacement: Officially closed companies can only claim compensation for lost sales until December 31: Finance Minister Gernot Blmel made this clear on Saturday. December sales of the previous year are used as a comparison value. Service providers close to the agency and museums receive 50 percent. Trade is classified: depending on the extent to which companies are affected, they receive 37.5, 25 or 12.5 percent. Blmel foresees additional costs of 300 million euros.
Fixed costs and loss compensation: Starting in January, closed businesses depend on the fixed cost subsidy and compensation for losses. In the case of loss compensation, losses incurred between September 16 and June 30, 2021 inclusive, may be forecast or compensated retrospectively. The upper limit per company is three million euros. In the case of the fixed cost subsidy, it is 800,000 euros. Negotiations with the EU Commission to lift this lid are continuing, Blmel said.
Help for providers: There should also be immediate help for those indirectly affected: it refers to suppliers that have been severely affected by the crisis but are not officially closed and therefore have not yet been able to request a replacement sales, such as laundries, bakeries and beverage manufacturers. There will be guidelines in December, Blmel announced. In order to pay accurately, aid for closed companies would first have to be processed. Aid for those indirectly affected must be requested from the end of January. They should amount to about a billion euros.
Short-term work: Companies can apply for phase three of reduced-time work until the end of March 2021. A reduction of working hours to zero percent is also possible during the third closure, says Labor Minister Christine Aschbacher.
Reactions: Harald Mahrer, President of the Austrian Chamber of Commerce (WK), and WK Secretary General Karlheinz Kopf welcomed the measures. There was strong criticism from liberal economic spokesman Erwin Angerer: The government is characterized only by “empty promises and placebo measures.”
