Hello here are some of the answers to your questions. Let me start by saying oh dear, after so many years living in the relaxed West Coast you might get a shock living here!

Firstly with respect to your permit, an L Permit is realtively easy to get and generally the quotas for these are ample although this is not true everywhere. However (first oh dear) you are an Indian citizen and therefore not from the EU. Switzerland has a bilateral agreement with the EU and therefore treats EU citizens with an advantage and discriminates against the others. It then has a ranking list used to determine how easily it is to get a permit to work dependent on qualifications, country of origin, job to be done, length of permit required and so on. You personally will not get a permit by application yourself, this needs to come from your company demonstrating an inter-company transfer. Furthermore, and I will be totally honest here, since the above agreement the rules for giving any permits out to non-EU citizens have been tightened and you need to be either a senior executive or employed on a short term contract or performing specific research. Your Swiss company HR department will be very familiar with the process and you will need to get this done in conjunction with the required Visa. It is also important to determine on application for the visa whether you will be travelling within the EU as well. So it is now as clear as mud!!

Everyone working within Switzerland on an L Permit is liable to tax. The Tax system in CH is complex and has 3 tiers. As an L permit holder you are charged tax at source and are unable to reclaim this unless your annualised salary is in excess of 120K and then only if the Gemeinde in which you are living accept this (which I am afraid they probably won't and therfore you are unlikely to see the money again!). As to the tax calculator you need to speak to your HR department and opt for the lowest form of L permit tax which I believe is 8%. You will need to specifiy that you want to take this route. Basically it is a pre-payment and you would "normally" then top it up to whatever it should be - which of course you won't do because you will be long gone.

For short termers like you I am not sure this applies. After 1 year residence it is compulsory but for short term I am not so sure and no employers definitely do not pay for this. As usual the cost will be dependent on the Gemeinde you live in...

And you might guess that here is an oh dear... As a short term L Permit holder it is very unlikely you will get a car or motorbike sold to you. If you do, with a US license you can drive 1 year without a Swiss test.

And yes the Swiss do have funny and strict rules and unfortunately they do enforce them and they do have a habit of finding the poor soles who try to get around them, although I do know of one or two who are still managing.

Richard