Dear Mustachians,
We are currently renovating the kitchen & appliances from a 2006 apartment we bought recently. My understanding is that value preserving maintenance costs are deductible from taxes. How do we establish that the total expenses for renovation (approx. 30k CHF) is value preserving not value adding? All the appliance that are being replaced are also most the same quality and brand . Would the invoices from the contractor be sufficient for tax declaration?
Cheers.
Element532
If you are not adding any extra appliance / window / new separation wall, you can deduct it all. Take pictures of before / after. Invoices should be sufficient in case of a control.
You just go ahead and claim it as 100% maintenance on your tax return. If they disagree, they will ask to see pictures before/after, kitchen contract, etc. You don’t need to send anything upfront.
Usually you can claim all maintenance as renovation if you don’t alter its original purpose and location. The usual example of what is considered as value-adding, and not tax -deductible, is to install a Hot Tub if you had a normal bathtub.
The kitchen is one of the few things considered differently. Since it is a renovation but a new kitchen will always add some value to your property, you can deduct only 67% percent of it.
There is an official document regarding what you can deduct but I cannot find it in English.
Are you sure ? There is nothing in the federal law and ordinance at least.
Bullsh*t
Deduct 100% first and just see what they reply. There’s no harm in not asking for full deduction anyway (besides a little bit of interest for underpaid provisional tax, whatever, I don’t sweat over a few franks)
Yes usually you can send in any invoice you have and see what they accept/reject as deduction.
@kilin be open to discuss and inform yourself before calling bul$hit
Below the official document from canton Ticino in Italian. It may vary for other swiss canton.
CIRCOLARE N. 7/2019
open pfd CIRCOLARE N. 7/2019
I don’t speak Italian. Point at the exact passage that I’m supposed to look at and maybe paste its translation
If you’re talking about the rule that you can in general claim at least 67%, yes that sort of things exists in ZH and other cantons.
“Ersatz mit Komfortverbesserung” 2/3 (67% deductible)
but note
“Reparatur / gleichwertiger Ersatz” is 100% deductible
So I still stand by calling your remark bull$hit until you prove me wrong.
Scratch your kitchen with knife (if necessary) and take pictures. Change it (not plastic to marble…), then go to federal court, you’ll probably win.
And if the costs are not value preserving but value adding you can dedcut the from the “Grundstückgewinnsteuer”. These are the taxes you have to pay when selling the property and making any money.
So it is a good idea to start collecting all documents that prove the value adding costs you had.
(but you probably knew that allready, didn’t you 
)
Thank you for your inputs, this has been really helpful. For this tax year, we will plan to claim 100% of the renovation amount as tax deduction. I will keep this thread updated once get any feedback from tax authority.