Hand over your Swiss tax return now

Yes. Your advice, your documents and every conversation run in English — and in Spanish if you prefer. The tax authorities correspond in the official language of your canton, which is why that correspondence comes to us and not to you: we deal with the tax office in German and explain to you in English what it means and what, if anything, you have to decide.

You sign a power of attorney for the tax office. From that moment we are your address in tax matters: deadline extensions, formal requests, queries and the assessment come to us instead of to you. You hear from us when something needs deciding — not with every letter.

Often yes. Once your gross employment income reaches CHF 120’000 a year — hitting the figure exactly is enough, and spouses are counted separately — the subsequent ordinary assessment (NOV) is mandatory, and it is also triggered by income or assets that are not covered by the deduction from your salary. Below that threshold you can request it, by 31 March of the following year. That request is binding: it cannot be withdrawn and it applies to every following year until your liability at source ends. Whether it works in your favor is therefore something we calculate before you file it, not afterwards.

That depends on your situation: pillar 3a, buy-ins into your pension fund, commuting and professional expenses, childcare, further education, insurance premiums, maintenance on property you own. You do not have to know them in advance — we ask the questions that bring them out.

A Swiss address the authorities can write to. That is fiscal representation — your address for service with the Swiss tax authorities, and because it is an ongoing task it is part of the annual engagement: we receive the correspondence, keep the deadlines and keep you informed while you live abroad.

In most of the cantons we serve, we file fully digitally, without you signing anything. In some cantons the tax office still asks for a signed approval form — we prepare it and get in touch in good time. You need the power of attorney in every case; it is where everything starts.

Yes. After filing, your tax return as a PDF and a provisional tax calculation are ready to download in the client portal. The copy of the reviewed assessment follows later.

If you are resident here, yes: Switzerland assesses your worldwide income and assets. Real estate abroad is allocated to the other country and only affects the rate applied here, but it still has to be declared. With the automatic exchange of information, details of foreign accounts reach the Swiss authorities anyway. If something was never declared, we settle it in a voluntary disclosure.

Switzerland has double taxation agreements (DTAs) with more than 100 countries. The agreement determines which country may tax what, not where the money sits. We apply it, reclaim foreign taxes withheld at source on your dividends and have them credited against your Swiss tax through form DA-1. And we reclaim the Swiss withholding tax (Verrechnungssteuer) on your interest and dividends — which only works if the assets are properly declared.

We compare every assessment against what was submitted. If it differs, we file the objection with the tax office at no additional fee — for tax periods covered by the engagement. Anything beyond that, meaning appeal proceedings before the cantonal or federal courts, we quote separately and discuss openly with you beforehand. Proceedings opened before the engagement began are not included.

Yes. Valuation as of the reference date, documentation of your transactions and the line between a private capital gain and professional trading are part of the engagement. Everything on this is on our page Crypto & taxes. If older holdings were never declared, we clean that up first in a voluntary disclosure.

No. We work on a fee basis only and take no commissions. We broker neither insurance nor mortgages nor investment products. Apart from the authorities we file your return with, and the service providers named in our privacy policy, nobody gets to see your tax data.

Because an annual engagement is not an off-the-shelf package. Two households with the same permit can mean completely different amounts of work. After the initial consultation you receive a quote with a fixed annual fee that applies for the whole term — with no hourly billing and no additional charge for follow-up questions.

Taxiva is a service of Expertiva AG, a fiduciary company based in Zurich and a member of the professional association SwissAccounting, whose rules of professional conduct and annual continuing-education requirement we are bound by. We work in the cantons of Zurich, Bern, St. Gallen, Aargau, Zug, Basel-Landschaft, Basel-Stadt, Schwyz, Lucerne, Grisons and Thurgau.