Hans Jörg Schelling

Hans Jörg Schelling, born Johann Georg Schelling on 27 December 1953 in Hohenems, Vorarlberg, is an Austrian management consultant, businessman and politician of the Austrian People's Party (ÖVP). He was Austria's federal minister of finance from 1 September 2014 to 18 December 2017.

Before that appointment he had worked in furniture retail and as an independent consultant. The parliament biography, drawn from his own submissions, lists a managing-director role at the Leiner/Kika group from 1988, the managing directorship of XXXLutz GmbH in Wels from 1992 to 2005, and his consulting firm Schelling GmbH from 1990. From 2004 to 2014 he was a vice-president of the Austrian Federal Economic Chamber, and from 2009 he chaired the board of the Main Association of Austrian Social Insurance Institutions. He was an ÖVP city councillor in St. Pölten from 2001 to 2005 and a member of the National Council from 1 February 2007 to 27 October 2008.

President Heinz Fischer swore him in on 1 September 2014 during a reshuffle of Chancellor Werner Faymann's coalition between the Social Democratic Party of Austria and the ÖVP. Michael Spindelegger had resigned as finance minister, vice-chancellor and ÖVP leader on 26 August 2014 after a dispute inside the party and with its Social Democratic partner over tax cuts. Schelling was still finance minister on 18 December 2017, when Chancellor Christian Kern handed office to Sebastian Kurz and Schelling handed the finance ministry to Hartwig Löger. In November 2015 he signed a settlement under which the Republic paid the Free State of Bavaria €1.23 billion, ending litigation between Heta Asset Resolution — the bad bank of the nationalised Hypo Alpe-Adria — and its former parent BayernLB over claims Austria put above €2.4 billion. In May 2016 he announced a memorandum with major Heta creditors that offered 75 percent on senior debt and 30 percent on subordinated debt, presented with a federally guaranteed zero-coupon bond as a recovery of about 90 percent.

In March 2018, Nord Stream 2 AG, the Gazprom-owned company building the Nord Stream 2 Baltic pipeline, confirmed that Schelling was advising it on economic, regulatory and political developments in Europe. In October 2026 the Economic and Corruption Prosecutor's Office brought him to trial at the Wiener Neustadt regional court, together with industrialist Siegfried Wolf and a former tax-office head, over an alleged 2018 arrangement tying a tax waiver of about €630,000 to help with a promotion. According to prosecutors, Wolf and the official are suspected of corruption, while Schelling is charged with attempted incitement to abuse of office for asking a senior Finance Ministry official, after leaving office, to support the waiver; each of the accused faces up to ten years in prison. At the opening he told the court that he had only put Wolf in contact with a senior official, Wolf and the former official pleaded not guilty, and their lawyers denied the allegations. A verdict was expected in December 2026.

Early life and education

Family and schooling

Hans Jörg Schelling, whose name on his baptismal certificate is Johann Georg Schelling, was born on 27 December 1953 in the hospital at Hohenems, Vorarlberg. In an account quoted by the magazine profil, he said that snowfall that day was so heavy that an ambulance could not reach the family's home in a mountain village at about 1,200 metres, and that his father took his mother down to Hohenems by sled. His father was a primary-school director and, besides his salary, received payment in kind, chiefly firewood and a plot on which vegetables were grown; Schelling later said that as a boy his aim at harvest was to find the largest potato. He had two sisters and recalled regularly paying one of them five schillings to take his turn at Sunday kitchen duty.

He attended primary school from 1960 to 1964 and a Gymnasium from 1964 to 1972, both in Feldkirch, and passed the Matura in 1972. The Austrian Parliament's biography, which reproduces information supplied by Schelling and is dated 18 December 2017, also lists compulsory military service (Präsenzdienst) with the Austrian Armed Forces in 1972–1973.

University and doctorate

After the Matura he studied law in the faculty of law at the University of Vienna from 1972 to 1974. He later described that course as dry and said he set it aside after a few semesters. He then studied business administration, concentrating on marketing and organisation, at the Johannes Kepler University Linz, and took the degree of Magister rerum socialium oeconomicarumque (Mag. rer. soc. oec.) in 1978. profil reported that he finished the business degree in eight semesters while working as a petrol-station attendant, a roofer and a porter.

He received the doctorate (Dr. rer. soc. oec.) in 1981. The dissertation title given in the profil profile was Möglichkeiten zur Förderung des Exports von Klein- und Mittelbetrieben ("Possibilities for promoting the export of small and medium-sized firms"). From 1978 to 1981 he was a university assistant at the Institute for Trade, Sales and Marketing under Ernest Kulhavy. Kulhavy had founded that institute in 1966, when the university was still the Hochschule für Sozial- und Wirtschaftswissenschaften; the institute's own history describes it as the first in the German-speaking world whose name included the word "Marketing". A curriculum circulated when Schelling entered the National Council in 2007 lists him as a lecturer (Lehrbeauftragter) in communication, market research, international marketing and case studies, and states that from 1982 to 1996 he remained a university lecturer and examiner in marketing at Linz.

Gerhard Stürmer, himself one of Kulhavy's assistants and at the time a teacher of Schelling's, told the Oberösterreichische Nachrichten in 2014 that Schelling had written an export study for the Austrian Economic Chamber in the mid-1970s which Stürmer still considered valid. Stürmer said the assistants had been marked by a strong orientation toward customers and selling. The 2007 curriculum also records the Ed. Haas Prize and the Rudolf Sallinger Prize among Schelling's distinctions, without assigning either award to a particular thesis.

Furniture retail and consulting

Leiner and Kika

Schelling spent the first decade of his management career at the Kika/Leiner furniture group. His parliamentary biography, which members supply themselves, states that he joined in 1981, became a managing director in a senior role in 1988, and left in 1990. Die Presse later described those nine years under Herbert Koch, then head of Kika/Leiner, as the period in which Schelling was Koch’s right-hand man and was known internally as his “crown prince.” It reported that differences in 1990 sent him from the then market leader to the much smaller Lutz chain, and that his aim of making Lutz number one in Austria was met with amusement. By 2008 the same paper wrote that XXXLutz had overtaken Kika/Leiner and ranked second behind IKEA.

XXXLutz

The parliamentary biography dates his managing directorship of XXXLutz in Wels from 1992 to 2005. The commercial register, as compiled by the transparency project Meine Abgeordneten, records him as a managing director of Lutz trading companies from 2 September 1991, including LUTZ-HANDELS-G.m.b.H. until 21 December 1995 and XXXLutz-IMSE GmbH from 27 January 1997 to 4 February 2005. Die Presse reported that the owning Seifert brothers gave him a 12 percent stake and that his plan to turn the then insignificant business into Austria’s largest furniture retailer was initially ridiculed.

A Trend company profile repeats a 2003 company claim of Austrian market leadership, with group turnover of €1.25 billion against €200 million in 1991 and about 8,000 employees. Die Presse later wrote that 2003 turnover of €1.25 billion made the group Austria’s largest furniture retailer, and that turnover of €2 billion in 2009 made it the world’s second-largest behind IKEA. The later number is a group figure, not evidence that he remained operating chief: in March 2005 the business put a new holding, XLA Holding GmbH, over XXXLutz GmbH for strategic control. Schelling became managing director of the holding and joined the supervisory board of the operating company; the group said its next aim was to double turnover by 2013.

Register entries list him as managing director of that holding, later renamed XXXLutz-AT GmbH, from 15 February 2005 to 5 February 2009; as deputy chairman of the supervisory board of XXXLutz GmbH from 3 January 2008 to 1 December 2009 and of XXXLutz Marken GmbH from 21 September 2007 to 17 February 2011; and as a supervisory-board member of XXXLutz-IMSE GmbH from 25 May 2005 to 7 November 2008. His parliamentary biography compresses the XXXLutz GmbH board seat into 2005–2011 and the holding directorship, together with a board seat, into 2005–2008. Die Presse reported that he sold his stake in the Lutz group in 2009.

Consulting and corporate boards

Consulting ran alongside the retail posts. From 4 October 1990 to 21 December 1995 he was managing director and shareholder of Dr. Johann Georg Schelling Betriebsberatungsgesellschaft m.b.H. From 13 August 1996 he was managing director of Schelling GesmbH, registered in Sankt Pölten, until 18 September 2014, and a shareholder until 27 September 2014. The parliamentary biography summarizes this as independent consulting through Schelling GmbH from 1990 to 2014. From 12 February 1999 to 23 October 2014 he was a managing director of BIG DEAL Marken & Marketing Beratung GmbH in Vienna, and a shareholder until 21 October 2014; the biography describes him as managing partner for 1999–2014.

Other seats are documented outside the furniture group. TextilWirtschaft reported that on 11 March 2003 he was newly elected to the supervisory board of Palmers Textil AG after a dispute between family shareholders and management; the register records the seat from 9 April 2003 to 5 October 2004. The 2006 annual report of Österreichische Post lists him as a shareholder representative from 6 May 2002 to 5 February 2007, describing him as an independent management consultant and managing director of XLA GmbH. The commercial register records a supervisory-board seat at Telekom Austria from 2 June 2006 to 6 March 2007.

Social insurance and the Economic Chamber

Austrian Economic Chamber

From 2004 to 2014 Hans Jörg Schelling was a vice-president of the Austrian Economic Chamber (Wirtschaftskammer Österreich). The parliamentary biography, based on his own information, also places him in those years on the Lower Austria leadership of the Wirtschaftsbund, the business league of the Austrian People's Party. He was a management consultant and had been a city councillor in Sankt Pölten.

The presidium made him coordinator of a second reform of the branch organisations. On 26 June 2008 the Wirtschaftsparlament adopted a new order by a large majority. The chamber reported a 30 percent cut in Fachgruppen and Fachorganisationen, a drop in public-law bodies from 967 to 678, and a review every five years. It said a 30 percent contribution cut from 2002 had lowered annual contributions by €150 million, and that provincial chambers could optionally reduce the second levy.

AUVA and the Main Association

He was chairman (Obmann) of the Allgemeine Unfallversicherungsanstalt (AUVA), the statutory accident insurer, only from 1 May to 16 December 2008. On 21 January 2009 the twelve voting members of the association board of the Central Association of Austrian Social Insurance Authorities (Hauptverband) elected him chairman for 2009–2012. Die Presse dates the AUVA post from May 2008 and the Hauptverband chair from January 2009. In October 2008, during the 2008 financial crisis, the AUVA said two holdings of €29 million—under 10 percent of its money- and capital-market investments—could no longer be treated as secure, and he said write-downs would not change benefits.

The Hauptverband is the umbrella of sickness, accident and pension social insurance, run by the social partners. Parliament lists him as chairman through 2014, and as supervisory-board chairman of the e-card company (2009–2014) and of the social-insurance pension fund (2013–2014). Die Presse wrote that sickness-fund debt had fallen by about €1 billion, to €281 million, since January 2009, helped by federal transfers as well as cost controls.

In November 2010 his "Masterplan Gesundheit" proposed federal control of planning, steering, financing and quality, with operations left to the Länder. The Österreichische Ärztezeitung reported his figure of about €1.5 billion a year to cover hospital deficits, and hospital costs rising about 4.5 percent a year. Medical Chamber president Walter Dorner rejected the plan as corporate thinking; Health Minister Alois Stöger pointed to the existing Federal Health Commission.

In December 2012 the federation, the Länder and social insurance agreed two Article 15a contracts, on joint targets and on financing, from the start of 2014. They did not federalise those powers. Spending was still to rise, but from 5.2 percent a year toward an assumed GDP rate of 3.6 percent by 2016—a damping of €3.43 billion (Länder €2.058 billion, social insurance €1.372 billion). Reinhold Mitterlehner, nominating him finance minister in 2014, said he had carried the reform through with the Länder and brought the regional sickness funds into surplus. Successor Peter McDonald, a Wirtschaftsbund director, was elected unanimously and said the reform still existed mainly on paper.

Volksbanken-AG

On the night of 26 to 27 April 2012, after a partial nationalisation, Schelling was elected supervisory-board chairman of Österreichische Volksbanken-AG until the 2017 annual meeting. Deputies were Franz Zwickl and Rainer Kuhnle. The regional Volksbanken, close to the ÖVP, preferred him to Zwickl, the Social Democrats' candidate. ORF reported a 2011 loss of €1.357 billion. A 70 percent capital cut erased €700 million of a €1 billion federal injection from 2009; a €484 million issue (the federation €250 million, the regional banks €234 million) and €100 million in new guarantees followed. The Republic took 43.3 percent, to be sold by 2017. The Oesterreichische Nationalbank estimated that failure could have cost up to €40 billion.

He resigned in early September 2014 on becoming finance minister. Klaus Liebscher, a board member since December 2012, succeeded him until 2017. The bank had received €1.2 billion in state capital. Conditions set by the European Union in 2012 required the business and staff to be halved, and the state to exit, by 2017. Die Presse reported that a merger of 44 regional banks down to nine was unfinished and that the 2014 stress test was expected to open another capital gap.

Political career before the finance ministry

St. Pölten

Schelling entered municipal politics in Sankt Pölten, the capital of Lower Austria, in the council term that followed the election of 7 October 2001. The city's chronicle records 25.7 percent for the Austrian People's Party (ÖVP) and 56.5 percent, and 25 seats, for the Social Democratic Party of Austria. The parliamentary biography, which rests on the member's own information and was current as of 18 December 2017, lists him as an ÖVP Stadtrat of St. Pölten from 2001 to 2005. A parliamentary press note of 7 March 2007 instead dated that office to 2001–2004. When the Austrian Economic Chamber announced on 31 March 2004 that he would become a vice-president from 1 April, its press service still described him as a St. Pölten Stadtrat, chairman of the committee for municipal companies (städtische Unternehmen), and a member of the hospital and finance committees. The same biography lists him, from 2004 to 2014, as a member of the state leadership (Landesleitung) of the Austrian Economic League (Wirtschaftsbund) in Lower Austria.

He remained managing director of the furniture retailer XXXLutz while holding the city office. In May 2002 the SPÖ member of the National Council Anton Heinzl criticised Schelling's appointment to the supervisory board of Österreichische Post as a third paid role, alongside the Stadtrat post and XXXLutz, and said he should concentrate on St. Pölten, including threatened closures of local post offices. Heinzl later said that on 23 April 2003 the Higher Regional Court in Vienna had made final a conditional fine imposed in 2002 by the St. Pölten regional court for defamation (üble Nachrede), over Schelling's claim in the 2001 campaign that mayor Willi Gruber had used public money for a private "Bürgermeisterparty." Heinzl called for a public apology or for Schelling to leave his political offices.

National Council

Schelling sat in the National Council for the ÖVP, representing Lower Austria, in the XXIII legislative period from 1 February 2007 to 27 October 2008. The seat was a parliamentary mandate, not a ministerial office. At the 13th sitting, on 7 March 2007, President Barbara Prammer read a notice from the federal electoral authority: Schelling received the mandate previously held by Adolfine Herta Mikesch, and Mikesch received the mandate vacated by Foreign Minister Ursula Plassnik. Schelling, Dorothea Schittenhelm and Rosa Lohfeyer then took the oath. The parliament's press service wrote the same day that Erwin Pröll, Landeshauptmann of Lower Austria, had brought Schelling into politics, that he had been a vice-president of the Economic Chamber since 2004, and that he intended to concentrate in the National Council on economic and location policy.

Membership lists published for the XXIII period name him as an ÖVP member of the constitutional committee (Verfassungsausschuss) as of 20 July 2007 and of the buildings committee (Bautenausschuss) as of 7 July 2008. He is also listed, as of 12 July 2008, on the education committee (Unterrichtsausschuss) and, as of 24 September 2008, on the committee for research, innovation and technology. The parliamentary biography records no further National Council mandate after 27 October 2008.

Minister of Finance

Appointment and the two cabinets

On 26 August 2014 Michael Spindelegger resigned as finance minister, vice-chancellor and leader of the Austrian People's Party (ÖVP). He warned the party against what he called populism on tax cuts: many in the ÖVP thought he was too cautious, and tensions with the Social Democratic Party of Austria (SPÖ), senior partner in Austria's grand coalition, had also grown.

On 31 August the ÖVP executive in Linz unanimously accepted new party leader Reinhold Mitterlehner's proposal to nominate Hans Jörg Schelling as finance minister and Harald Mahrer as a state secretary for economy and science. Mitterlehner cited Schelling's chairmanship of the Main Association of Austrian Social Insurance Institutions and the health-reform talks with the Länder. Governor Erwin Pröll and Interior Minister Johanna Mikl-Leitner, who had favored the economist Gottfried Haber, dropped objections from Lower Austria and the employees' wing. The Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) called him a man of the old political apparatus.

On 1 September 2014 President Heinz Fischer swore in Schelling, Health Minister Sabine Oberhauser (SPÖ) and Mahrer, after Spindelegger's resignation and the death of National Council President Barbara Prammer. Parliament lists him as Bundesminister für Finanzen from that day until 18 December 2017.

He served in the second Faymann government under Chancellor Werner Faymann. Faymann resigned as chancellor and SPÖ leader on 9 May 2016, saying the country needed a chancellor with his party's full support and that he no longer had it. Christian Kern took over, and on 18 May replaced four SPÖ office-holders after a last cabinet meeting in the old line-up. Schelling stayed finance minister for the whole Kern government.

Budget, debt and coalition tax talks

How to pay for lower income tax still divided the coalition. In February 2015 Faymann, following Vienna mayor Michael Häupl, dropped a millionaire levy levied on wealth itself and offered to tax increases in wealth instead, while insisting on higher take-home pay. Schelling called a revived inheritance and gift tax taboo and said there would be no new taxes under him.

On the night of 12–13 March 2015 the parties announced a deal Faymann called the largest tax reform of the Second Republic; Mitterlehner put its volume at €5 billion. From the 17 March cabinet paper, the Austrian Institute of Economic Research (WIFO) put the gross revenue loss at €3.9 billion in 2016 and €5.2 billion a year from 2017 (about 1.4 percent of GDP), of which the tariff alone was €4.35 billion. The entry rate fell from 36.5 to 25 percent between €11,001 and €18,000 of taxable income, then rose through 35, 42 and 48 percent; the 50 percent rate started at €90,001 rather than €60,001, and income above €1 million was taxed at 55 percent for 2016–2020. The negative tax for employees rose from €110 to as much as €400 a year, with a smaller credit for pensioners.

WIFO's account of the counter-financing—fraud controls, dividend withholding tax up from 25 to 27.5 percent, real-estate gains tax from 25 to 30 percent, land-transfer tax changes, a higher social-insurance ceiling and spending cuts—left a net tax cut of about €1.4 billion in 2016 and €1.8 billion by 2019, on the assumption that the offsets arrived in full. The overnight agreement contained no general wealth or inheritance tax. The National Council passed the bill on 7 July 2015 with SPÖ and ÖVP votes. Faymann spoke of €5 billion in cuts and about 6,500 extra jobs; Schelling called the package balanced. Opposition parties said bracket creep would erode the relief and criticised compulsory cash registers and the curtailment of bank secrecy, which passed with Green votes. Most changes took effect on 1 January 2016.

In the Eurostat series current in October 2026, the general-government deficit was 1.9 percent of GDP in 2014, 0.5 percent in 2015, 1.5 percent in 2016 and 0.8 percent in 2017, and consolidated gross debt was 85.2, 85.6, 83.4 and 79.1 percent of GDP. Statistik Austria's final 2016 figures, given in September 2017, had the deficit at 1.6 percent of GDP, 0.6 points above 2015, and linked a 10.5 percent drop in wage-tax receipts to the reform; debt rose €4.7 billion to €295.2 billion while the ratio fell to 83.6 percent on GDP growth. Without bank-support effects, Statistik Austria said, the ratio would have risen from 76.2 to 77.4 percent; those effects include the Hypo Alpe Adria settlement.

Departure in 2017

Schelling was elected in the snap 2017 Austrian legislative election of 15 October, but at the National Council's constitutive sitting on 9 November 2017 he declined the seat. Michaela Steinacker (ÖVP) took the mandate, lifting the share of women in the chamber to 34.4 percent.

On 30 November he said he would not serve as finance minister in the next government and would stay only until it was formed; he was leaving politics, including any National Bank post, and would not discuss his reasons. He also dropped a possible bid to chair the Eurogroup, an office tied to the Austrian finance portfolio, after the domestic position stayed unsettled and the European People's Party chose not to run a candidate.

On 18 December 2017 President Alexander Van der Bellen swore in the first Kurz government of the ÖVP and the FPÖ under Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, with Hartwig Löger as finance minister—the date parliament gives as the end of Schelling's term.

Hypo Alpe Adria and bank resolution

The bad bank and the Bavarian settlement

Hypo Alpe-Adria had already been nationalised in December 2009. Bayerische Landesbank (BayernLB), majority-owned by Bavaria, had owned the Carinthia-based bank for about two and a half years; the rescue had cost Austrian taxpayers about €5.5 billion by 2015, Bloomberg reported. On 30 October 2014 Hypo Alpe-Adria-Bank International was deregulated and continued as a wind-down unit.

On 1 March 2015 the Financial Market Authority (FMA), as resolution authority under the Bank Recovery and Resolution Act (BaSAG), put Heta into resolution and deferred liabilities until 31 May 2016 so a plan could be prepared. In May a Munich court ordered Heta to pay BayernLB €1.03 billion and 1.29 billion Swiss francs, plus interest. Austria had its own claim, which Bloomberg put at €3.5 billion, alleging that BayernLB had hidden the bank's condition before the rescue.

On 7 July 2015 Schelling and Bavarian finance minister Markus Söder signed a memorandum of understanding approved by both cabinets. Lawsuits would end, BayernLB would join the wind-down as an ordinary creditor, and Austria would pay Bavaria €1.23 billion as security, to be repaid to Austria only to the extent BayernLB later collected from Heta. Bavaria was therefore assured of at least €1.23 billion. Schelling called the sum 45 percent of the Munich award and a signal that a deal could come in under 50 percent, not a ratio other creditors could expect. Söder called it acceptable.

The National Council passed the enabling act on 15 October 2015 on SPÖ and ÖVP votes. It authorised the payment and reciprocal waivers. Government notes booked €1.23 billion in 2015 and Bavaria's obligation, from 30 June 2017, to hand back whatever BayernLB received from Heta, so the net budget effect was at most €1.23 billion. Opposition parties voted no. Werner Kogler of the Greens treated BayernLB's funds as equity-substitute capital and preferred a haircut to shifting guarantees onto Carinthia. The Freedom Party called the settlement a risky rush, and NEOS objected that the Griss report was still missing.

Schelling and Söder signed in Vienna on 11 November 2015. The ministry called the €1.23 billion a guarantee payment and said Bavaria would in any event receive 45 percent of a €2.4 billion comparison amount. Schelling said he expected to recover the outlay from Hypo assets.

Creditors, guarantees and FIMBAG

The act also let him lend to Carinthia, long term and cheaply, to repurchase bonds under provincial deficiency guarantees, if the province contributed and disclosed its assets. The price was to match what Heta and Carinthia could bear, and a 66 percent majority was to bind every creditor. Schelling's aim was to end the Heta problem and release Carinthia from the guarantees.

A cash offer of 75 percent of face value on senior bonds failed, even after a federal exchange into long-dated zero-coupon bonds lifted it a little above 80 percent; creditor representatives wanted a figure beginning with nine. On 10 April 2016 the FMA ordered the bail-in: a full write-off of subordinated debt, a 53.98 percent cut in eligible senior liabilities (a 46.02 percent quota), no interest from 1 March 2015, and a common maturity of 31 December 2023. The quota rested on a conservative recovery estimate; a hypothetical insolvency dividend was put at 34.8 percent at best. Guarantees on about €11.2 billion of bonds left Carinthia exposed for a gap of about €6.4 billion. The ministry and Governor Peter Kaiser still preferred a deal outside court.

A revised offer then passed. On 10 October 2016 the Carinthian compensation-payment fund reported acceptance by 98.71 percent of creditors — 99.55 percent of senior bonds, about €10 billion, and 89.42 percent of subordinated bonds, about €1 billion — above thresholds of two-thirds and 25 percent. Recoveries were 75 to 90 percent for senior creditors and 30 to 45 percent for subordinated creditors, in cash or state paper. Carinthia was released from about €11 billion of guarantees and was to contribute €1.2 billion.

FIMBAG, trustee since 11 November 2008 for federal crisis aid to banks, was closed over the same period. Its board told a parliamentary inquiry that redemptions, two capital cuts and sales had reduced the trust book from about €6 billion to roughly €670 million by the end of 2015. On 3 November 2015 the cabinet, with the company, set dissolution for 30 June 2016. Schelling said the task was largely finished, and that BaSAG and state-aid rules barred fresh support for going-concern banks without a creditor bail-in. Oversight of Heta moved to ABBAG, the federal wind-down company set up in 2014.

Tax policy and European financial files

Domestic measures

Schelling carried the SPÖ–ÖVP wage and income-tax reform into the National Council finance committee on 30 June 2015: a Steuerreformgesetz 2015/2016 of about €5 billion, with a new tariff and a higher negative tax. The ministry’s 2016 budget report put the package at €5.2 billion from 1 January 2016.

The entry rate fell from 36.5 to 25 percent, then 35, 42 and 48 percent. The 50 percent rate was to begin at €90,000 rather than €60,000, and income above €1 million at 55 percent for a limited time. Schelling told Die Presse he had resisted the 55 percent band, limited it to five years, and accepted it as the condition for a higher capital-gains rate.

The draft counted on €1.9 billion from anti-fraud measures, including compulsory cash registers, receipts and narrower bank secrecy in tax cases; €1.1 billion of spending cuts; €850 million from extra consumption; and €350 million from asset-related taxes. Capital income other than savings-book interest was to rise from 25 to 27.5 percent. That rise and the bank-secrecy change each needed a two-thirds majority, for which the Greens signalled support. On listed supplies, including hotels, the reduced value-added tax rate was to rise from 10 to 13 percent, for hotels only from 1 April 2016.

Information exchange and offshore leaks

Austria wrote the OECD Common Reporting Standard into the Gemeinsamer Meldestandard-Gesetz, for other European Union states under Directive 2014/107/EU and for third countries under the multilateral agreement signed on 29 October 2014. Institutions were to file data for 2017 by 30 June 2018. In April 2016 Schelling said Austria would start exchanging in 2017 and that the EU would be covered by 2018 at the latest, as would Switzerland and Liechtenstein.

After Swiss Leaks reports on HSBC’s Swiss private bank, the ministry requested the Austrian names from France in early February 2015. On 26 February, in Vienna, French finance minister Michel Sapin said the data would be sent the following week; ORF reported press accounts of about 400 people with an Austrian connection.

Going to the April 2016 meetings of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, Schelling told Heute the Panama Papers were “viel heiße Luft. Wie bei VW”, and that Panamanian letterbox companies had been known for 40 years. Kurier recorded the same phrase. He said ORF, Falter and the ICIJ had refused the files, and he revived a 2014 trust-register plan blocked chiefly by Britain. On 20 April Green leader Eva Glawischnig told the National Council Austria had been “das Panama Europas”; Schelling rejected the charge. Freedom Party MP Roman Haider alleged that a furniture firm where Schelling had worked was registered in Malta and avoided €40 million of Austrian tax. That structure is dealt with in the criticism of his business record.

Financial transaction tax and EU files

Eleven states pursued a financial transaction tax under enhanced cooperation after an EU-wide levy failed in 2013. On 27 January 2015 Schelling said Austria would handle political coordination and Portugal the technical work, still hoping for a partial start on 1 January 2016. Die Presse called the role the coordinating chair. By September he reported a model agreed in principle, a floor of €250 million for Austria, and 1 January 2018 as the realistic date rather than mid-2017. In December, Estonia having stepped aside, ten states agreed only to continue. Schelling called it a “Durchbruch” and a new beginning, with rates still open; he favoured 0.1 percent on bonds and 0.01 percent on derivatives.

In May 2016 he said he would propose giving up the chair if June brought no deal—“mein Latein ist am Ende”—though Austria would stay in. Two further exits, he added, would leave fewer than the nine states the procedure requires. No such tax was in force when he left the ministry.

At the Tallinn Ecofin in September 2017 he called an OECD deal the aim for digital profits and an EU arrangement the “Mindestanforderung”, citing Netflix’s Austrian turnover without a local establishment. In October he proposed a three-year bridge, possibly a six percent VAT surcharge, and said 19 states backed an equalisation tax while a digital permanent establishment was defined. After the June 2016 Brexit vote he told Handelsblatt he did not think the United Kingdom would actually leave: he expected 28 EU members in five years, from staying in to a Swiss- or Norwegian-style agreement.

Criticism and legal proceedings

The Malta licensing structure

Criticism of Schelling's business past focused on a licensing structure at the furniture retailer XXXLutz. He was managing director of XXXLutz GmbH in Wels until 2005 and then sat on its supervisory board until 2011. In a 2007 restructuring the group spun off its trading business and left the trademarks, including XXXLutz, Möbelix and Mömax, in a company legal commentary identifies as XXXLutz Marken GmbH. That company transferred rights valued at about €383 million to a Maltese establishment and in January 2008 moved its management to Malta; the Austrian trading company paid turnover-based fees of roughly €50 million to €53 million a year. Reporting in 2014 put the rights at €341 million and group payments at €53.7 million in 2012/13. Malta's headline corporate-tax rate was 35 percent, but refunds to foreign shareholders cut the effective rate on the royalties to about 5 percent, against 25 percent in Austria.

The structure became a political issue after Schelling, of the Austrian People's Party, became finance minister. The Greens tabled parliamentary questions. A 2017 question, citing the companies register, stated that in 2007 he was co-managing director of the parent XLA-Holding GmbH—an entry deleted at the beginning of 2009—and deputy chairman of the supervisory board of XXXLutz GmbH. His office told the Tiroler Tageszeitung that he had been an ordinary supervisory-board member, not operationally involved in the decision and not responsible for tax and accounting. It said the arrangement had been lawful, while pointing to later statutory changes meant to keep the Austrian tax base in Austria.

The court case that followed was the company's, not a finding against Schelling personally. On 27 November 2020 the Verwaltungsgerichtshof dismissed the trading company's revision in Ra 2019/15/0162, on corporation tax for 2008 and 2009. It upheld the Bundesfinanzgericht: economic ownership of the marks had remained with the Austrian trading company, which decided on their use, advertising and licensing and bore advertising and marketing costs of more than €56 million in 2008 and nearly €68 million in 2009. The company managed from Malta had salary costs of €91,791 and €77,008 in those years, spread across eight people, mostly part-time, and only a supporting role. The court treated it as a trustee holding bare legal title, so the licence payments were not deductible business expenses. Commentary naming XXXLutz as the litigant recorded that the group lost at every instance for the years in dispute.

Investigations and the 2026 trial

A separate criminal investigation concerned the industrialist Siegfried Wolf, a former co-chief executive of Magna International. After a change in the double-tax treaty with Switzerland, a 2016 large-taxpayer audit found that Swiss income Wolf received from 2006 to 2011 should also have been taxed in Austria and initially assessed about €11 million. Interrogation records of Thomas Schmid, then Finance Ministry secretary-general, which Die Presse reported in 2022, say Wolf contacted Schmid on the advice of former chancellor Wolfgang Schüssel. Schmid said he felt pressed by Wolf and Schelling, that Schelling wanted a compromise despite sceptical specialists, and that the bill fell to about €7 million. He also said Schelling once told him to delete a text message at once. Before a parliamentary committee Schelling said he had nothing to reproach himself for and had forwarded such requests to the competent offices. That account concerns his time as minister; it is Schmid's testimony and is disputed.

The charge that reached trial is later. On 26 March 2026 the Wirtschafts- und Korruptionsstaatsanwaltschaft indicted Wolf, a former tax-office head, and Schelling in the CASAG complex. Prosecutors allege that in 2018, at a Saturday meeting at the Guntramsdorf motorway station, Wolf offered to back the official's application to head the Baden-Mödling tax office if she approved a waiver of about €630,000, and that she granted it about six weeks later without recording the contact and against the specialist view. Wolf is charged with bribery and incitement to abuse of office; the official with abuse of office, passive bribery, and breach of secrecy for later passing information about the revocation. Schelling, already out of office, is charged with attempted incitement to abuse of office for asking Schmid to intervene so that Wolf's tax debt would be remitted.

The trial opened on 20 October 2026 at the regional court in Wiener Neustadt, in Lower Austria. The prosecutor described the sum in court as €687,000 in Anspruchszinsen—default interest, not a penalty—for 2006 to 2011, after Wolf had accepted about €7 million in back tax but not the interest. ORF reported that the Finance Ministry quashed the waiver as unlawful on 26 June 2019; the WKStA said the Bundesfinanzgericht annulled it and the Verwaltungsgerichtshof confirmed that result. Wolf told the court he had made no corrupt bargain. The former official said she was not guilty and had approved a draft she considered legally correct. Schelling said he had only put Wolf in touch with the senior official, later finance minister Eduard Müller, and denied incitement. His lawyer had previously denied the allegation in an interview with ORF. Each accused faces one to ten years in prison if convicted. A verdict was expected in December 2026 at the earliest, and none had been delivered while the trial continued in late October. The presumption of innocence applies to all three.

Activities after government

Nord Stream 2

About three months after leaving the finance ministry, Schelling took a consulting contract with Nord Stream 2 AG, the Zug-based project company for the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline and a wholly owned subsidiary of Gazprom. Handelsblatt, which also reported that former German chancellor Gerhard Schröder chaired the administrative board, quoted a spokesman on 27 March 2018: understanding economic, regulatory and political developments in Europe was important to the project, and Schelling supported the company in that. Schelling confirmed the contract to the Oberösterreichische Nachrichten and declined to discuss clients or give interviews; Kurier noted that the client was Nord Stream 2 AG, not Gazprom itself.

As finance minister he had been the Republic's owner representative at OMV, where the state was the largest shareholder with 31.5 percent, and OMV was a financing partner in the pipeline. He knew Gazprom's chief executive, Alexey Miller, from that period. On 14 December 2016 he and Chancellor Christian Kern attended, and Schelling welcomed, the Vienna signing of a basic agreement: OMV was to take 24.98 percent of Achimov blocks IV and V at Urengoy, and Gazprom 38.5 percent of OMV (Norge), largely without cash. Norway opposed a Gazprom stake in Norwegian licences, and in October 2018 the exchange was dropped; Seele and Miller said in Saint Petersburg that OMV would buy the 24.98 percent for cash instead.

Die Presse reported that Schelling met Nord Stream 2 chief executive Matthias Warnig at Vienna's Hotel Kempinski in late January 2018, and that Warnig would not confirm the talk concerned a job. Kurier reported that Warnig then asked Schelling to advise, that Schelling reactivated his consulting firm and planned to start on 2 May 2018 and enter the lobbying register, and that Seele denied brokering the mandate. Eva Geiblinger of Transparency International Austria and Max Lercher of the Social Democratic Party of Austria called for a statutory cooling-off period of at least two years, citing the appearance of the move rather than alleging corruption. Prosecutors later alleged, in the case against Siegfried Wolf, that Wolf helped Schelling obtain the contract and that Schelling thanked him on its extension; Schelling denied unlawful conduct.

OMV nomination and later roles

In 2019 the state holding Österreichische Beteiligungs AG (ÖBAG) nominated Schelling for OMV's supervisory board, to be elected at the annual general meeting on 14 May. It was withdrawn shortly beforehand. Under the new ÖBAG law a former minister had to wait two years before joining the board of a company with a state stake, and Schelling's period ran until the end of December 2019; OMV's website still listed him when the reversal was reported. Thomas Schmid, ÖBAG's chief executive, told trend that Schelling was blocked "not only because of the cooling-off phase, but also because of other topics." The seat went to tax adviser Cathrine Trattner, put forward by the Freedom Party of Austria and expected to chair the audit committee. Kurier said he would join in 2020 instead, but OMV's annual report for that year does not list him on the supervisory board.

On 9 September 2020 the governor of Carinthia, Peter Kaiser, awarded Schelling the Carinthian State Order in Gold in Klagenfurt, citing his part in the Heta negotiations over Hypo Alpe Adria, which ended with an agreement signed on 10 October 2016. Separately, his private foundation, JGS Privatstiftung, invested in the Linz firm Roomle in 2018 with Johannes Artmayr and in August 2019 joined him in buying about half of the aws Gründerfonds stake, reported as roughly 11 percent of the company.

Personal life

Family

A parliamentary press note of March 2007, issued when Schelling entered the National Council, described him as a married father of two daughters. His wife is Ursula. He later said that, before he accepted the finance ministry in 2014, the couple had discussed the effect on the family and who would run the winery, and that he would not have taken the post without her support. The marriage had brought him from Vorarlberg to Lower Austria; they lived in a townhouse in central St. Pölten, which contemporary profiles called his centre of life. He is the son of a Vorarlberg mountain-school director and a nurse, and he recalled that at weekends his father and the household's two sons, rather than his working mother, did the cooking.

In 2014, rules barring ministers from business led him to reorder private holdings. The company that administers the Stiftsweingut Herzogenburg was placed under his daughter Julia. The Wiener Zeitung reported the next year that she had been made managing director and had handled sales and marketing since the estate was taken on.

Winery and private interests

In 2009 Schelling leased the Stiftsweingut Herzogenburg at Wielandsthal, the winery of the Augustinian canons of Herzogenburg Monastery in the Traisental, which he called a long-held wish. The parliamentary biography, current to the end of his finance ministry on 18 December 2017, lists the role only as "Stiftsweingut Herzogenburg 2009–2014".

The estate has belonged to the canons since the 13th century and was customarily leased, with the monastery taking a third of the crop; the previous tenant, Weingut Maurer, left in 2008. An 18th-century cellar and Kellerstöckl are by Jakob Prandtauer, and the press house and Kellerschlössel by his nephew Joseph Munggenast. Schelling modernized the winery, kept the grape varieties and stopped making sweet wines. By 2015 the vineyards had grown from 5.5 to 11 hectares, led by Grüner Veltliner, with Josef Baumgartner and Matthias Getzinger responsible for winemaking. He said he hoped, after government, to work as a full-time grower.

In 2018 Die Presse reported that he cited a shared interest in winegrowing when he sought a meeting with Nord Stream 2's Matthias Warnig, and Kurier described him as having turned to growing at the Stiftsweingut Herzogenburg.

The 2007 note listed golf, sailing and cooking, a taste for pasta and Traisental Grüner Veltliner, and holidays in Austria and Spain. Profiles in 2014 added a second home on the Attersee and said he cooked for friends and served wine from the leased estate. In 2016 he told Kurier that he cooked without recipes and used the kitchen as a break from the ministry's figures.