The step-by-step plan for Austria

In this step you get to know the deadlines that shape your whole planning. As an EU citizen you don't need a permit in Austria. The law does give you three deadlines, which this plan calls the three clocks:

• The Meldezettel. This is your registration at your home address. You register within three days of moving into your home, with your landlord's signature on the form.
• The Anmeldebescheinigung. This is the residence document for EU citizens. You apply for it within four months. That period runs from your entry, not from your registration.
• The car. You may drive on Dutch plates for one month. After that the car has to be registered in Austria.

Around these runs a fixed order. First the Meldezettel, then social insurance via your employer, then ID Austria (the Austrian digital identity) and finally the Anmeldebescheinigung. The step-by-step plan keeps track of the order and the clocks for you.

In this step you work out whether it pays to bring your car. Do that before you decide.

The biggest myth of this route is: "as removal goods your car is exempt". That's not true. Austria levies the NoVA, a tax at a car's first registration in Austria. You pay it even when you move from an EU country. The six-month rule that circulates online is the customs exemption for people coming from a country outside the EU.

The rules that do apply:

• A fully electric car pays 0%.
• For a used car, the NoVA rate of the moment of its first Dutch registration applies. So a car from before mid-2021 falls under the old, milder rate.
• Against that, the Netherlands refunds the remaining BPM, because you export the car within the EU. The remaining BPM is the part of the Dutch car tax that's still in your car's value.
• The cost of re-registering to Austrian plates is modest.

Work your own car through before you decide. For an economical or electric car, bringing it is usually favourable. For an older car that uses a lot of fuel and emits a lot of CO2, rarely.

In this step you see what the move is going to cost you. The paperwork costs little here: the Meldezettel is free and the Anmeldebescheinigung costs € 44.

The money is mainly in these items:

• The home, with a deposit of up to three, sometimes six months' rent.
• The drive, with the vignette (the toll pass for the Austrian motorways).
• The car, if you bring it. You do that sum in the step about the car.

Austria offers something in return: fourteen months' salary, two of them at six per cent tax. Work it out with your own choices in the calculator.

With this step you decide together whether you go. Austria feels close: same time zone, eight hours' drive. Still, a few things deserve an honest conversation before you decide.

Going alone? Then have this conversation with the people you're leaving behind. The questions below work for them too.

Take three evenings. One conversation is too short for a decision like this. Set aside three evenings, a week apart. Talk with your partner, and depending on their age with your children too:

• Evening 1, why. Why do we want this? What do we hope to find in Austria? What are we leaving behind here? Would that really be different there?
• Evening 2, what we give up. Who and what will we miss? What are we dreading most? What do we do if it disappoints?
• Evening 3, the conditions. What needs to be in place for each of us to say yes? When do we check together whether it's going well, for example after six and after twelve months? And what would be a reason for us to come back?

Write the conditions down. On the kitchen-table card it all fits on one A4 sheet.

Take the mountains into those evenings too. Winter is a lifestyle there, and it costs money: winter tyres, vignettes, and a mountain you only go up insured.

Divide the work. Agree who takes on which part of this plan: the papers, the house and the cancellations, the school, the move. That way not one of you carries everything. Invite your partner into your plan; then you both see what's done.

Is one of you going without an income of your own? Someone who lives in Austria and doesn't work in the Netherlands usually stops building up AOW. AOW is the Dutch state pension. For every year you're not insured, you later get 2 percent less AOW. From the moment you're no longer insured, you have one year to take out voluntary insurance with the SVB.

Also discuss whether that partner keeps an account and money of their own, and how you decide together on big expenses. And who earns the income in the first months?

Married, registered or living together? That can matter for your partner's right of residence, for being insured together for healthcare and for inheritance. If your partner is an EU citizen, your partner has a right of residence of their own. If your partner has a nationality from outside the EU, your partner lives in Austria as a family member of an EU citizen. Not every EU country treats a registered partnership as a marriage. If you're neither married nor registered, the country decides case by case, on the basis of a durable relationship. Check in the step on your healthcare further on in your plan what applies to you.

Are children coming? How you tell them depends on their age:

• Up to about four. Tell them shortly before the move and keep fixed routines, such as the bedtime ritual and the cuddly toy in the hand luggage.
• Primary school. Tell them well in advance and let them look along: photos of the school, the neighbourhood and the house. Let them choose something, such as their room.
• Teenagers. Involve them in the decision itself. For them, saying goodbye to friends weighs heaviest. Agree how they'll stay in touch and when they'll see their friends again.

Mind the school choice at ten. After four years of Volksschule (primary school) the system already chooses between Gymnasium and Mittelschule. That's four years earlier than in the Netherlands, and the Volksschule report has a say. If you move with a child of eight or nine, start with German from day one. For children who arrive without German there are Deutschförderklassen, separate classes to learn German.

Who learns the language, and when? Every counter works in German, "Sie" is the standard and titles matter. Whoever speaks German integrates quickly here. Whoever doesn't stays on the outside. Often the partner without work needs the language most, and that's exactly the one with no colleagues to practise with. Plan it together, preferably before you leave.

Choose below the date on which you want to be standing in Austria. The step-by-step plan works out whether that's feasible with what still has to happen. If it gets tight, it says so honestly. A target date is yours: you can always move it, and moving it is a perfectly fine outcome.