The bill arrives in spring. You should know the number now.
On a B permit, tax comes out of your salary every month and an assessment can still arrive asking for thousands more. On a C permit nothing is withheld at all, so the whole bill lands at once, and it is usually larger than people expect. Either way you are left with the same two questions: how much, and did I claim everything I was entitled to?
TaxAgent answers both. It calculates your federal, cantonal and communal tax from the official ESTV scales for your own municipality, turns it into an amount to set aside each month so the bill is already covered when it arrives, and gives you an assistant grounded in Swiss tax law to ask what else you can deduct, with the answer in francs.
Married, two children, salary CHF 118'000, no church tax. Form fields verified against the Wegleitung zur Steuererklärung, Kanton Zürich.
What a fiduciary knows about a salaried return is written down. We wrote it down.
There is no secret to a salaried Swiss return. It is the statutory scales, the cantonal caps, the permit rules and the form line numbers, applied without mistakes. All of it is public, and all of it is encoded here, canton by canton.
| WHAT THE RETURN REQUIRES | HOW IT IS HANDLED |
|---|---|
| Federal, cantonal and communal scales | The official ESTV dataset, evaluated with your municipality's own multiplier and church rate. Verified against the published ESTV calculator for every canton. |
| Deduction limits that differ per canton | Professional expense rates, insurance caps, commuting and meal ceilings, the medical threshold, child and personal deductions. Federal and cantonal limits are calculated separately, as they must be. |
| Permit and assessment routing | B permit above CHF 120'000 goes to ordinary assessment, below it to source tax with the voluntary assessment comparison. A mid-year move to a C permit is handled as a full year with the withheld tax credited. |
| Withholding checked, not assumed | Your tariff code is derived from your profile and every payslip is checked against the official tariff tables your employer's payroll imports. Anything off by more than CHF 5 is flagged. |
| Household treatment | Married splitting and double tariffs, parent tariff eligibility, wealth tax and allowances, child categories carried forward from last year and recalculated at this year's rates. |
| Getting it onto the actual form | Every figure mapped to its form line, a receipt checklist per claimed deduction, and the portal steps for your canton. |
How the number is produced
Your situation, in plain questions
Permit, canton, municipality, household. B permit holders are routed to ordinary assessment or source tax by the statutory CHF 120'000 threshold, not by guesswork.
Documents read, values proposed
Payslips, Lohnausweis, 3a and bank statements are read so you do not retype them. Every extracted value is shown for your confirmation before it enters your return.
Filing pack for your canton
Your figures mapped onto the official form lines, a receipt checklist, and step by step instructions for eTax.SZ, ZHprivateTax, TaxMe, VaudTax or GeTax.
Reading documents is automated. The tax arithmetic is not. It is rule-based code, unit tested against published ESTV calculator results for every canton, and no language model touches your francs.
An assistant that knows the rules, and tells you what they are worth
Most people lose money by not claiming something they were entitled to. The assistant is grounded in Swiss tax law and in your own documents, so it points at the deduction you are missing and puts a franc figure on it. It phrases the advice. The figure behind it comes from running your return twice through the calculator, once with and once without.
Which deductions to ask for
Dependants, work costs, retirement and the rest, in five steps. Your canton's numbers are given in francs rather than as rules to interpret: Zürich allows commuting up to CHF 5'200, a flat CHF 3'200 for meals, and medical costs above CHF 5'513 in this example.
What each one is actually worth to you
Contributed CHF 4'200 of the CHF 7'258 Pillar 3a maximum? You are told that paying in the rest before 31 December cuts your bill by CHF 580.41, before you decide anything. Same for the parent tariff, or a medical bill that crosses your canton's threshold.
Documents you uploaded but never used
If a statement in your vault contains a figure your draft return does not reflect yet, the assistant says so and names the document. You confirm it before anything changes.
The assistant reads and proposes. It cannot change your return, and it never invents a franc. Ask it to set your municipality or your salary and it shows you a confirmation card with the tax impact first.
No unpleasant letter in the spring
Tax is withheld from your salary each month, and then an assessment arrives asking for more. TaxAgent works out what that gap will be and turns it into a monthly amount to put aside, starting now.
| Estimated tax for the year | 7'457.14 |
| Put aside so far | −2'200.00 |
| Still to find | 5'257.14 |
| Each month, six months left | 876.19 |
A bonus is treated separately: you are told what to hold back from that payment on its own marginal rate, rather than having it blurred into the monthly figure. And if a C permit arrives mid-year, the tax already withheld is credited against the full-year bill.
Figures from the Savings ledger. A deposit or a withdrawal both adjust the monthly target.
And if your year is not a salaried year
Some situations need a person, not a calculator. TaxAgent recognises them, tells you plainly, and can put you in touch with an independent fiduciary in your canton who works on that kind of case.
You can still use TaxAgent for the salaried part of the picture. It will keep the workings and the receipts in one place, which is exactly what an advisor asks for first.
Ask us for a name
Tell us the canton and what makes the year complicated. We put you in touch with an independent fiduciary who takes that kind of work, and send your TaxAgent worksheet along, so the first meeting starts from real figures rather than a stack of paper.
Free, and you are under no obligation.
See it before you buy
Two fields, no account. You get the federal, cantonal and communal split for your own municipality.
No email required to see the result. We ask for one only if you want the worksheet as a PDF.
Buying is a separate decision. The estimate is yours either way, and you can leave without an account.
One tax year. One price. No renewal you have to remember to cancel.
Buy the 2026 tax year once. Every canton, unlimited documents, the filing pack and the PDF worksheet are all included. There is no upgrade tier holding anything back.
Estimates are for orientation and planning. They are not official tax or legal advice, and you should review every figure before filing. If your year includes self-employment, a property sale or securities gains, a fiduciary is the right call and we will tell you so rather than sell you something.
TWINT, card and invoice. 14 day refund if the estimate is not usable.
Questions people actually ask
I already have a tax advisor. Why would I need this?
For a salaried return, TaxAgent does the same work from the same official tables, and shows you the workings. If your year involves property, a business or foreign assets, that is a case for a professional, and we will refer you to one rather than guess.
Does a model decide what I owe?
No. Automation reads your documents so you do not retype them, and proposes each value for your confirmation. The tax itself is computed by rule-based code from the official ESTV scales and is tested against the official calculator canton by canton.
Where do my documents live?
In Switzerland, in the Zürich cloud region, inside a workspace scoped to your account alone. Nothing is shared between customers and nothing is applied to your return without your confirmation.
Which cantons are covered?
All 26, with the municipal and church multipliers for roughly 2'100 municipalities. Official form line numbers are mapped for Schwyz and Zürich, with a clear category breakdown for the rest.
When is this the wrong product?
Self-employment, a property sale, complex securities, or an open dispute with the tax office. TaxAgent will flag it and point you to a fiduciary rather than guess.