Resource with tax brackets at the federal/cantonal/local level

Taxes
1

Hi all,

Do you know if there is a downloadable resource that reports the tax brackets (for income, wealth, second pillar withdrawals) applied at the different levels of the administration?

I found this resource where through some clicking I can find out the tax rate at the federal/cantonal level, but I cannot find the info at the Gemeinde level.

Thanks a lot for your help, cheers

2

You probably need to combine it with the tax multiplier dataset (on the same page).

1 Like
3

As mentioned, the gemeinde is just a percentage of the canton.

4

Thank you both! It was just under my nose :slight_smile:

5

Follow up questions:

  1. How do I interpret it? For each Gemeinde there is an entry for Canton and one for the Gemeinde. For Zurich, the Canton value is always 98, which I find confusing. How does it factor into the computation?
  2. In the multipliers section the lump sum withdrawals are not listed. Is that because the Gemeinde dos not take its cut of it?

Thanks!

6

Regarding 1.

I think cantons at some point decided on a “base” rate progression. And then later in the future, when they want to make adjustments, instead of modifying the initial values, they change the multiplier.
I assume they would have to change this “base” progression in case they wanted to change the progressivity of taxation. But there’s no need if you just want to just adjust revenues up/down a bit.

Why it’s easier to do it this way, I am not sure.

For 2., as far as I know they do.
Maybe they don’t list it because the multiplier is the same as for income tax?

7

Maybe to double check your computation, use the official calculator with a few example see if it matches?

8

That’s a good suggestion, but I need to understand the formula first. My understanding is as follows:

  1. For each category i (e.g., income, wealth, lump sum) compute the taxes according to the progressive rate at the canton and confederation level. Let’s call these A_i and B_i, respectively.
  2. The actual taxes for each category are computed as T_i = A_i * CantonMultiplier(Base) * CantonMultiplier(Gemeinde) + B_i.
  3. The overall tax burden is computed as T = \sum_i T_i.

Is this correct?

9

That’s what I would try first, yes (and should be obvious if it’s incorrect).

edit: actually I would do multiplier of base + multiplier of Gemeinde, it doesn’t make sense to multiply them they should be added.

10

The Gemeinde multiplier is applied to the tax calculated for the canton.

For example, you worked out the canton tax is $100*. If the multiplier is 63%, then the gemeinde tax is $63. So total is $163.

Federal is an independent calculation.

Some cantons also have tax credits against income tax. It can be complicated as some of these credits apply only to income and not to wealth tax etc.

*see correction below for cases where canton is not 100%

11

The tax factor of the municipality is applied to the base tax (“einfache Staatssteuer”), not to the cantonal tax. The tax factor of the canton may be 100% but that’s not always the case.

E.g. for the city of Zurich, if the base tax (according to tax law) is CHF 100, the cantonal tax would currently be CHF 98 (Steuerfuss 98%) and the municipality tax would currently be CHF 119 (Steuerfuss 119%). The total would then be CHF 217 (excluding federal).

4 Likes
12

Ah. I overlooked that it wasn’t always 100%.

13

Then, according to this I should revise the formula above as:

  1. T_i = A_i (1 + Multiplier(Base) * Multiplier(Gemeinde)) + B_i
14

No, I think the following should be correct:

T_i = A_i (Multiplier(Canton) + Multiplier(Gemeinde)) + B_i

2 Likes
15

Ah, ok, thanks, I had understood that the canton multiplier was used as a corrective factor for the Gemeinde multiplier.

16

Am I reading this right?

This are the tax rates on income at the confederation level from the official website.

According to this table, there is a tax rate of 13% between 928,600 and 928,700 CHF (i.e., a range of 100 CHF), after which the tax rate drops to 11.50%. This does not seem to make any sense.

Screenshot 2025-03-07 at 17.09.34
Screenshot 2025-03-07 at 17.09.342138Ă—1844 497 KB

Can someone make sense of it?

18

This is to close the progression on a given rate iirc. It’s a bit weird but it makes some sense when you plot the avg rate instead of marginal.

edit: but yeah you’re better off earning an extra franc if you’re above 1M income than if you’re at 500k :smiley:

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19

It’s a bit strange, but I’d figure I’d look at it in more detail only when I’m earning over 928k a year :wink:

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20

If I try to download the tax rate for lump sum withdrawals from the official website I get an empty table. Does anyone happen to know what are the rates for Zurich? Or whether they can be downloaded from any other source?

Thanks!

21

Update: I wrote to the tax office and they pointed me to this document, according to which, IIUC:

  • At the federal level, lump sum withdrawals are taxed as income but using a tax rate that is 1/5 of the normal income rate.
  • At the ZH canton level, it is taxed as if the value of the withdrawal were 1/20 of the actual value. Of course ach canton has different rates. The resulting amount still needs to be multiplied for the sum of the canton and gemeinde multipliers.

Did I understand the contents of the document correctly? @Ilixio @jay @PhilMongoose @nabalzbhf, tagging you as I think that you may be interested, and you have more experience in this area than I do.

Thanks, cheers