This year, I have the distinct privilege of filing not one but two tax returns: one for my canton of residence, and one for the Canton of Vaud, which taxes me due to economic ties. How generous of them.
Vaud kindly sent me the paperwork to file online through their cutting-edge platform, VaudTax. Thrilled by the promise of digital efficiency, I logged in. Step one: enter my identification number and code. Flawless. I was practically filing already. Step two: confirm my municipality of residence as of December 31st. And here’s where things get spicy, because I don’t actually live in the canton. You know, the whole reason I’m filing a separate return in the first place. But apparently, no one at VaudTax ever imagined that someone owing taxes to Vaud might not actually live there. A truly unforeseeable edge case.
So the system just… stops. Won’t let me go any further. Thanks for playing.
My only option? Take the return I already completed for my actual canton of residence, print it, and send it by postal mail. In 2026. I half expected them to ask for a wax seal.
Now, setting politics entirely aside, and regardless of what happens on March 8th, I’m fairly convinced there’s massive potential here to improve the process. AI, automation, basic common sense, take your pick. But for now, the Swiss tax system remains proudly, defiantly analog. One stamp at a time.
I do the same. I just print out my tax return and send it to the other canton. It’s actually much easier this way than filling out a 2nd tax return. Just imagine typing out all the IBKR transactions on 2 different platforms!
First time Datalevel user, they provide an e-statement. Result: tax in 30 minutes instead of 16 hours (+ 4 hours looking for errors).
There is an open source solution too, but I’m too stupid to make that work on my linux box. But I gladly pay CHF 30 (next year 50 I think) for that service!
Also I thought that’s how it should work, right? Maybe there’s a lack of documentation? Forwarding your tax declaration after filing it in your canton of residence seems like a pragmatic/easy/low cost solution (esp. since it’s a very small amount of people impacted).
Surprised to hear that you pay a penalty (interest) because the tax was not guesstimated correctly!
And if they take a couple of years to check your tax declaration, will you be charged the interest for these years?
Getting your estimate changed is generally very easy, and in my municipality (canton Zurich, but not the city), you can just pre-pay whatever (no I didn’t try and see what happens if I grossly overpay). So in general you can just pay the difference between your original estimate when you fill in your final tax return. If you did that correctly, the final tax bill shouldn’t diverge too much.
Now if your tax return differs a lot from what the tax authorities decided, sure it can get annoying I guess.
Yes, you will. But you should be able to pay the difference (and you’re encouraged to) when you receive the extra (unexpected compared to previous year) income (I usually recompute it during the year and I end up fairly close to the final value).
And you should definitely settle the difference when you file your taxes (since you have the final number at that point, if you underpayed that’s the time to top up your account).
For the people from Zurich:
This year, as a way to login, you will be able to choose either AGOV or the normal Login. Don’t choose AGOV!
You will have to re enter all the data, nothing is imported from last year automatically (unless maybe you saved a file from the tax return 2024, which you can import).
Happened to me and, as I heard now, also to a friend.
This will be interesting, the first year I’ll try to claim something given it’s the first year I have US dividends. The BL tax appears to have the DA-1 and R-US forms rolled into one, is this correct?
I’ll do a mock-up and ask for the forum’s wisdom, any help will be appreciated, looks reasonably simple though.
Did you try to skip this? I think this step is just for those old-school folks that used to do things on the offline-software. Your tax info from last year should still be there if you click one step forward.
Ah true. I meant the download software, which was then submitted online. ZHprivate tax is the online only version, directly in web browser.
Maybe you get better luck next year
I was referring to 2024 Online and 2025 online.
Probably 2024 Software and 2025 online works differently.
" Import der Vorjahresdaten
Sie können Ihre Steuererklärung vom letzten Jahr direkt aus Private Tax importieren. In den Folgejahren stehen Ihnen Ihre Vorjahresdaten automatisch in ZHprivateTax zur Verfügung. So müssen Sie nicht alle Angaben neu erfassen und sparen wertvolle Zeit."
No, it’s not replaced. ZHprivateTax (the browser version) has existed for a long time. I have been using it for around 4-5 years. Until 2024 ZHprivate Tax and private tax (installation of software, data was stored locally) is not supported anymore in 2025. So any person who was still using private tax will need to move to ZHprivateTax.
I found the explanation about this from the Steueramt very confusing. It gave me the impression that everyone, including people who had already been using ZHprivateTax, needed to take some migration action. Which is not the case, if you have been using ZHprivateTax, nothing changes in 2025 (except maybe the AGOV login).
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