Depends on how you’re taxed.
Normally, as a swiss or C permit holder or married to one, they’ll send you a few bills with suggested prepayment during the year, ignorable in most cantons, then after the end of the year the tax declaration forms to list your assets and income. You file, they hold onto them for a few years, then send you the final bills or give you refunds for taxes you prepaid earlier, with interest.
On L or B permit you’d be usually taxed at source only and don’t have to fill anything, tax at source and withholding taxes are the only thing you have to care about, except in two main cases:
- nachträgliche ordentliche Veranlagung: If you earn over 120k gross, you’ll have to file tax return and go through normal taxation later, tax-at-source will be treated as a prepayment of final taxes, you’ll get a bill or a refund for the difference to final taxes eventually.
- ergänzende Veranlagung zur Quellensteuer: if you have more than a certain amount of wealth or income above your taxed-at-source salary, (thresholds in ZH are 200k and 2.5k per year), you’re supposed to contact the tax office proactively about it, and they’ll send you the form. They’ll calculate you some taxes to pay on the extra income which will be on top of tax-at-source. They won’t treat tax-at-source as a prepayment for final taxes unlike for normal taxation and won’t refund it.
Note that tax at source rates are same within each canton, but normal taxation rates vary by commune. So the switch from one taxation to another can come either as a pleasant or a nasty surprise