Important: This is an independent visualization tool for informational purposes only. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by any government authority. Please verify all tax information with official cantonal sources before making financial decisions.

Methodology & Data Sources

How the calculations and visualizations are generated.

The Swiss Tax System

Switzerland has a unique federalist tax system with three levels of taxation: federal (Confederation), cantonal, and municipal. Each of the 26 cantons has its own tax law, and approximately 2,120 municipalities can set their own tax multipliers.

Income Tax

All cantons levy a comprehensive income tax covering employment income, self-employment, pensions, investment income, and property income. For married couples, the Swiss system uses global family taxation — the incomes of both spouses living in the same household are combined. Income tax rates are progressive in most cantons, meaning higher incomes face higher tax rates, though the exact brackets and progressivity vary significantly between cantons.

Wealth Tax

Switzerland is one of the few countries with a wealth tax on individuals. All cantons and municipalities tax net wealth (total assets minus debts) including property, securities, bank accounts, vehicles, and business assets. Personal household items are exempt. Wealth tax is assessed annually on December 31st. Cantons may grant personal wealth deductions and, separately, use a taxable-minimum threshold below which no wealth tax is levied. A minimum threshold is not an additional deduction once it is reached.

Deductions

Taxpayers can deduct professional expenses, social insurance contributions (AHV/IV/EO/ALV), pension contributions (2nd and 3rd pillar), debt interest, and insurance premiums subject to statutory caps. Social deductions for married couples, single parents, children, and dependents also apply but vary significantly between cantons.

Activity Profiles and Taxable-income Estimate

The annual-burden flow supports three profiles for each adult: employee, self-employed and no gainful activity. A married household can choose a profile for each spouse. Income is combined for tax, while personal social contributions and LAMal are calculated per adult.

The default gross-to-taxable-income estimate is intentionally limited. It first subtracts modelled personal mandatory social contributions and any entered occupational-pension contribution from total income, including tax-reported investment income. For each municipality, it then applies a separate conservative 2025 insurance deduction to cantonal and federal taxable income. That deduction uses the household's modelled or entered basic LAMal premium and the lower statutory rule for the selected childless household. Actual-cost rules are capped by the premium; official fixed basic allowances are preserved. Other insurance premiums, savings interest, children, subsidies and conditional increases are excluded. It does not infer professional expenses or other personal deductions. An entered taxable-income override replaces the final total taxable income and is never reduced again, while raw reported investment income remains separately identified for canton-rule calculations.

Data Sources

Tax Multipliers: Official 2025 data sourced from the Federal Tax Administration (ESTV).
Base Tax Rates: Transcribed from the applicable 2025 cantonal tax laws and official cantonal tariff tables.
Geographic Data: Municipal boundaries provided by swisstopo (swissBOUNDARIES3D).
Social Contributions: Official 2025 guidance for employees, unemployment insurance, the exact 2025 contribution tables for self-employed and non-employed people.
Basic Health Insurance: Official FOPH 2025 canton averages for the standard adult profile used by this estimate.
Insurance-premium deductions: Official FTA comparison for tax period 2025, supported by cantonal guidance for special rules.

Cantonal/Communal Income-tax Calculation

Most cantons apply a shared base tax to the cantonal and municipal multipliers. Where the authorities have different statutory schedules, each component is calculated separately:

Typical model = Base Tax × Cantonal Multiplier % + Base Tax × Municipal Multiplier %

Example: If the Base Tax is CHF 100, the Cantonal Multiplier is 100%, and the Municipal Multiplier is 119%, the cantonal/communal component is CHF 219.

Income-tax estimates use the 2025 cantonal tariff workbooks and calculate cantonal and communal components separately whenever their tariffs, coefficients or rounding rules differ. Married splitting or quotient factors determine the applicable rate, which is then expanded to the full taxable income where required; Fribourg's married tariff already embeds this relief. Schwyz uses a 1.9 quotient, separate authority schedules and whole-income top rates. Vaud uses a 1.8 quotient and applies its canton-only 4% reduction. Valais applies canton- and municipality-specific indexation in statutory stages, rounds the resulting rate to four decimals, applies the municipal coefficient before final CHF 0.05 rounding, and grants the 35% married-family reduction subject to CHF 680/4,900 limits per authority. Its CHF 10 cantonal minimum also applies at zero taxable income. Taxpayer-specific deductions and child-dependent quotients are not inferred. The default profile flow uses only the limited deductions described above; a taxable-income override must already reflect any additional deductions.

All-in Canton Comparison

Estimate: the comparison uses a user-facing economic measure, not a statutory tax rate.

All-in burden on wealth = (adjusted cantonal/communal income tax + adjusted cantonal/communal wealth tax + federal income tax) ÷ net wealth

Federal direct income tax is included in this comparison metric, but excluded from the cantonal maximum-burden rules. Those legal limits adjust cantonal and communal tax only.

Legal Tax and Economic Attribution

The legal view keeps income tax and wealth tax in their official categories. The economic view also runs a counterfactual with the same work and pension income but no wealth or investment income. That counterfactual is labelled work and pension-related; the difference from actual direct tax is labelled wealth-related. This attribution is explanatory, not a legal tax category, and is withheld if it would produce an unreliable negative split.

Wealth-related tax burden = Actual total direct tax − Work-and-pension counterfactual

Capitalising does not necessarily mean zero taxable income. Accumulating funds may report taxable reinvested income under the Federal Tax Administration rules. Entered fund income remains part of ordinary taxable income for either investment type. Inside the Geneva shield, the net-wealth-income component is at least 1% of net wealth. Under Vaud's in-force cumulative rule, determining income is approximated here as other entered taxable income plus the greater of actual investment income and 1% of Vaud taxable wealth. Neither theoretical 1% amount is added to ordinary taxable income. Vaud's intended alternative whole-income reform was not yet in force as of 26 August 2026 because the guillotine condition remained pending ahead of the 27 September vote.

For the gross-cash-income ratio, this first release treats a distributing fund's tax-reported amount as its gross cash distribution. If those two figures differ, the ratio is only an approximation.

Two wealth bases are kept separate. Net wealth is the economic amount entered by the user and remains the comparison denominator. Ordinary wealth tax and statutory per-mille limits use taxable wealth after the official 2025 standard personal deduction for a single person or married couple without children. Below a taxable-minimum threshold, taxable wealth remains the post-deduction amount, but the ordinary wealth-tax tariff is not levied (its tariff base is effectively zero). Geneva's 1% shield component uses net wealth, whereas Vaud's cumulative 1% minimum for the investment-income component uses Vaud taxable wealth. Personal deductions · Tax-free minimums

Simplified 2025 Maximum-Burden Rules

The calculator implements the following simplified rules, cross-checked against the official ESTV comparison and cantonal legislation:

BE: wealth tax is capped at the greater of 25% of actual net wealth income and 2.4‰ of taxable wealth. Art. 66
LU: income tax is capped at 22.8% for single or 22.4% for married taxpayers; wealth tax at 3‰ of taxable wealth. § 62
BS: wealth tax plus income tax attributable to wealth income is limited to 50% of actual net wealth income, subject to a 5‰ taxable-wealth floor. § 52
AG: income and wealth taxes are tested against 70% of net income; relief cannot exceed half the raw wealth tax. § 56
VD: 30% income and 10‰ taxable-wealth limits precede a combined ceiling equal to 60% of other determining income plus the greater of actual investment income and 1% of Vaud taxable wealth; a 3‰ taxable-wealth floor remains. This is the cumulative rule currently in force for tax year 2025. The intended alternative reform was not in force as of 26 August 2026 because the guillotine condition remained pending ahead of the 27 September vote. Art. 8 LICom · Official CCF audit, pp. 6–8
VS: when cantonal and communal wealth tax plus income tax attributable to net wealth income exceeds 20% of net taxable income, formula relief uses a CHF 10,000 allowance and cannot exceed half the wealth tax. Statutory net wealth income is gross wealth income less deductible acquisition and administration costs under Article 28. This estimate uses the entered investment income as a proxy and attributes the incremental cantonal and communal income tax to it. Official ordinance
GE: income and wealth taxes are capped at 60% of shield income, whose wealth-return component is at least 1% of net wealth; relief reduces wealth tax only. Art. 60 LIPP

Municipality benchmark: each canton is represented by its capital municipality; the displayed range recalculates the estimate for every mapped municipality with 2025 tax data in that canton.

Social Contributions and Basic Health Insurance (Not Tax)

AVS/AI/APG and, for employees, ALV are shown as personal social-insurance contributions, not tax. The estimate follows the selected profile: employee contributions use gross salary, self-employed contributions use the official income scale, and contributions for a person without gainful activity use assessable wealth plus 20 times qualifying pension income. Employer-paid shares are excluded. Variable compensation-office administration charges and canton/fund-specific family-allowance contributions are also excluded.

LAMal is shown separately from tax and social contributions. The default is the official 2025 canton average per modelled adult aged 26+, with the standard CHF 300 deductible and accident cover. It excludes premium subsidies, deductibles and other cost sharing. An entered actual annual premium replaces the benchmark; it is never added to it. The full premium remains an annual insurance expense. Separately, a conservative capped insurance amount reduces cantonal and federal taxable income; it is not a full deduction of the premium. The optional map view “Direct tax + social contributions + basic health insurance / net wealth” adds direct tax, personal social contributions and the full basic-insurance premium. It excludes occupational-pension saving because that contribution remains the household's asset.

Year consistency: tax tariffs, insurance-deduction rules, social-contribution rules and health-insurance benchmarks in the annual-burden estimate all use 2025 values. No 2026 amount is mixed into a 2025 result.

Material Limitations

The simplified scenario assumes no church affiliation. “Total Tax” includes only cantonal/communal income tax, wealth tax and federal income tax; it excludes church and other taxes, as well as intercantonal or international allocation. Church tax is also excluded from the BE, LU and AG maximum-burden tests. The estimates apply only the standard personal deduction for the selected no-children status; child, pensioner, low-income, business-asset and other conditional deductions are not modelled. They also do not reproduce Geneva's deduction recalculation, Vaud's qualifying-participation corrections or special zero/negative-income cases. Basel-Stadt applies its modelled low-yield relief automatically.

Professional-use status: this is an analytical estimator, not a tax-return, assessment or legal-opinion system. It does not model children, church tax, moves or partial tax years, complete itemised deductions, intercantonal or international allocation, real-estate or business-asset allocation, source taxes, or inheritance, gift and private capital-gains taxes. For client work, reconcile every input and result with complete documents, official federal and cantonal calculators, and the competent authority. Exact final canton/commune component rounding is primary-source pinned only for income tax in FR, GE, SZ, TI, VD and VS, and for wealth tax in GE; the last francs in other cantons require manual review.

Source-conflict policy: controlled primary-source resolutions used for AG, BL, FR, GE, GL, NE, TI, UR and VD are recorded in the 2025 data manifest. For AG, the official 2025 cantonal tariff and StGV section 29 require simple income tax to be rounded down to whole francs instead of using the ESTV calculator's nearest-franc projection. For UR, StG Art. 40(2) requires taxable income to be rounded down to CHF 100 despite the finer ESTV calculator grid. The BL single-person tariff above CHF 1'281'587 conflicts with the official calculator export; this implementation follows the continuous statutory formula and requires manual review for professional use until the authority resolves the conflict.

All results are non-binding estimates. Actual assessments depend on the full tax return and the competent authority.