Hi there,

We re planning to get married next year and have just realized as double earners we may end up paying much more taxes.

Has anyone any real idea if this is true, and if so by how much is the difference?

We are both taxed at source, and les say we re both earning for example 120k. I don't need exact numbers, but imagine today we pay 2000/month in taxes each, roughly how much more would we be likely to pay?

On the same note, could we merely get legally married in our home country and not declare it in here? Maybe hats ax evasion tho!

Thanks for any help

You can run your numbers through the comparis calculator:

Regular tax:
http://www.comparis.ch/steuern/steue...h/default.aspx


Tax at source:
http://www.comparis.ch/steuern/quell...r/default.aspx

I did try comparis before making the posting, but the numbers came out identical regardless of marriage.

I'm not sure the difference between married/non-married, but my tax/ahv/pension takes a total of about 15% of my salary as the 'secondary' income earner. I pay a higher % of tax, but we also have three children and the tax advantage for the children is credited to my husband's salary so he ends up paying about 12% in deductions.

In the scheme of things, it doesn't seem too hard when we come from somewhere with lower salaries and income tax up to 30%.

Get to the steuer web site for your canton and you will find there the % of the salary that you pay for tax as a singe earner and as a double earner. Generally as a double earner, the wife pays more tax compared with the tax she paid as single. At least this is how it works in Basel.

Bare in mind that as a double earner you will have probably have to do a tax return at the end of the year.

Also if you get married for example in Nov 2011, you will be taxed for the WHOLE 2011 as double earners. So you may end up with a nice bill to pay at the end.

I've heard there's more legislation being considered to make the tax situation the same for married & de-facto couples ... but could only find links to the last round of legislation in that direction, from 2009 ...

http://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/politics...ml?cid=6341574

That may have been true for you, but is not automatic. I was married in July and I will be assessed for August to December to pay taxes. My rate will be as if i earned for a year but i will not have the double earner thing. I think this has something to do because i am coming of quellensteuer

This is a forum 'urban myth' - if you are a local, you have to do a tax return anyway. If you are on quellensteuer you are obliged to do a tax return if your *individual* income goes over 120,000.

It may be in your interest to do a tax return, but it's not a combined income thing. I am currently in this process. Unfortunately, ours is triggered by an error in the way our employer deducted Quellensteuer, so we are making the adjustments and have to be sure it has been done correctly for our own peace of mind (don't fancy getting a 20,000chf tax bill after 2-3-4 years in Switzerland

I can see the appeal to do that but personally, I wouldn't risk it. I may be mistaken but I think by law, you are required to notify the local authorities of these changes.

Peace of mind is part of it too - no? I mean, do you want the worry that in several years time, it is discovered you were married and then you have to pay all those taxes in one go?

This is predicated on the the assumption that the wife is the lower earner. If not, then you need to speak to the tax office to ensure that the one who earns the least is taxed at the higher rate. The Swiss being Swiss will always assume that's the wife


Yes that would be. It could also land you into difficulties if one of you has an accident and/or is killed and inheritance laws kick in.

Don't worry about it. The difference is not that great.

The UK has separate filing, the US has joint filing, as does Switzerland.

It is what it is.

And... if you are getting married, don't factor it into your decision - just do it.

us has both seperate and joint filing

It is not very clear to me the fact that , if you are married and both(husband and wife) pays taxes at source, but the individual income/salary it is less then 120k per year ,is still mandatory do the tax return declaration? So, basically, if you are married and only the sum of the two salaries reach the amount of more then 120K per year do you still must do the tax return declaration or not beacuse the individual salary is less then this amount? Thanks in advance for any clarification!

Well Id like to think that was true.. but other postings on the forum seem to indicate it could make a significant impact :/

Id ideally like to do a proper calculation, but neither of the tools like comparis seem to give me different results based on being married or not.

I am afraid this would be considered as tax evasion. I know as we got married outside of Switzerland.

I got married a few weeks back, and found out a few days before that our liability here will go up by a horrific 17k chf per year between us.

It very nearly made us call the whole thing off, though she was probably looking for an excuse anyway.

It is not enough to merely check "married" or "not". To actually see the difference you have to make one calculation "non-married" for both partners and see how much tax you would be paying (adding up the respective tax amounts)

Then you can redo the calculation with the total income of both partners (check the married box, and "Doppelverdiener"-Ehe if applicable) and see how that comes out.

In a "traditional" one partner earning couple the difference between the taxes before and after marriage will not be too great. However, if both partners are earning they get pushed into a higher tax bracket with their combined income.... which leads to the so-called "marriage penalty"...

This is not really how it is calculated. If you are married you use a new tax scale for each person. It's not a 'combined' tax scale, it's that the second income earner goes through the tax brackets faster on their scale, than the primary income earner. The primary income earner goes up the tax brackets slower than the secondary income earner.

This means that you pay different tax if the first person earns 70K and the second person earns 40K, than if the first person earnt 90K and the second one 20...

I don't know in reality if it makes a huge difference, I'm curious...

Huh?

With one income, I paid nearly 1k/month more in taxes as single than when I was married!

Tom

N.B. This is 'normal' taxes, not 'taxed at source'.

No, it is not exactly how it is calculated. There is a separate scale for "non-married" and a "combined married" tax scale. But the "marriage penalty" is caused by a double income couples are effectively being bumped up a notch. Worst case scenario is where both partners earn about CHF 75'000 until 125'000

It depends somewhat in which tax bracket you are... and in single income marriages, there is no marriage penalty. It only affects double income marriages.