as an EU citizen i believe all taxes will automatically be taken from my pay. does anyone know exactly how much? does it vary from person to person?

as an example, if i was to earn 65000 chf gross annually, how much would that amount to after taxes. thanks for any help or advice

It will vary from Kanton to Kanton, have a search of the website, or I believe http://www.homegate.ch has a tax calculator.

on homegate, all i see is housing info. would you be able to tell me where on the site i could find that?

Click on any appartment available in your commune, it'll have a tax calculator link.

Why don't you type in "quellensteuer" in the search function here on EF and you will find a cornucopia of information on the matter :-)

i wasnt able to find it on homegate. maybe im retarded. i did find this site though for anyone else who may come upon the same issue:

http://www.swiss-tax.ch/2-engl.htm

cdubbs, i am in the same your conditions, search for my posts "Marzullo" i am almost reached the point. It's quite complicated to understand things, especially for an entry level graduate.

Let me give you a brief synopsis.

There are two types of Tax - direct ie PAYE and Ordinary ie what the Swiss have.

As a foreigner you will have PAYE until you achieve the Status C pemit, buy a house(although that is not a guarantee) or elect to be ordinarily taxed which is possible but also no guarantee.

So you are new then you have PAYE. This is called Quellensteuer in Switzerland. For this you can forget all the nice calculators. You are taxed from a table. So lets assume you earn 65000, are a declared Catholic, single, without children and live in Zürich. Then your tax rate is 7.21% and your tax bill will be CHF 392. This is based on a monthly salary of CHF 5402. If you are not religious have children are married then the rates vary accordingly. You can find the tables here:

http://www.steueramt.zh.ch/html/quel...beitnehmer.htm

If you are in another canton then they too will have their tables and you can usually(if not always) find them in the website of the cantonal tax office.

Can I apply deductions for pension and deductable expenses?

Third pillar contributions exclusively (or child alimony which I don't think applies to you).

Ok, now I understand.

From your gross salary, you have approximately 25% deduction including taxes, retirement funds (1st+2nd pillar) and insurances.

6000 gross -25% = 4500 net.

Of course different cantons and different towns have different rates. But the average around ZH/AG cantons is this.

Oh lordy. Now I have three different calculations to compare! There's also the new Credit Suisse calculator at https://calculators.credit-suisse.co...calculator=tax as well as the FTA's at http://www.estv.admin.ch/e/dienstlei...uerrechner.htm. Hilariously, they all give different results.

Let's say I'm earning CHF120,000 a year, married, no kids, no church and live in 8002. So federal taxes are CHF294/month.

If you use the tables published by the Kanton this means my cantonal tax is 825/month for a total of 825 + 825*1.22 + 294 = CHF2125.50/month.

If you use the Credit Suisse calculator the total number is 18609/yr i.e. CHF1550.75/month.

If you use the FTA's the number is 14550 i.e. CHF1212.50/month! They seem to invent a pile of deductions. If you fake a higher salary to offset this (turns out the right number to give it is 136,000) the result is 18305 i.e. CHF1525/month which validates Credit Suisse's result.

Being a pessimist and going on Richard's advice I would do initial financial planning on the worst-case number.

Incidentally, being an Australian currently earning the same figure in AUD i.e. AU$120,000/yr, my current tax burden is AUD2774/month. Divide this by the OECD's current CPL* ratio for AUD:CHF (1.23) and you get CHF2255. Which is pretty close - and that's surely no surprise to the economists in the audience.

This suggests that my quality of life would be roughly the same as a result, at least it should be for the indicators that economists care about!

I'd appreciate it if someone numerate could run their eyes over my numbers to validate them.

- K

* Dec '07 OECD PPP Comparative Price Levels are at http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/48/18/18598721.pdf

As you're likely to pay tax at source, what you want to do is look at the tax at source table for your canton which will give you your correct tax amount with minimum interpretation risk. Supposing you're single, this table gives you a tax rate of 11.67% per month, or 1164 CHF a month. Since you are married, this table gives you the corresponding rate of 8.27%, or 825 CHF a month.

These figures valid for Kt. Zurich. Kt. Geneva, multiply by two and you're in the right ballpark