Morning everyone,

I'm in a rather complicated situation and would appreciate some help. My boyfriend and I plan to leave Switzerland in mid December after his PhD defence and travel back to Australia. I've been employed with the Uni of Zürich on a PhD salary for the past 18 months and due to a delay with my residency permit at the beginning I did not get paid for my first 2 months of work. At the time my boss said that he would pay me these 2 extra months salary after I'd finished working (over a 2 month period).

I plan to finish work at the end of November and my boss wants to pay me till the end of January. We were planning to deregister in mid Dec when we left Zurich and vacated our flat etc. My boss has now said I should remain registered until they have finished paying me. Is it possible to deregister in advance (ie in mid Dec give the Kreisburo a leaving date in January, handing in my B permit at the sametime)? Or could I deregister from Australia a month and a half later? Can an employee still be paid into a bank account if he/she has deregistered? And can I still submit the forms to claim my pensionkasse at the end of January after my final income is paid? I'm aware that if I stayed registered till the end of January I'd have to continue paying my health insurance for that time. My pensionkasse, AHV contributions etc are taken from my income before it is paid into my bank account.

I'm not sure if it will work or is worth the extra CHF 5000 I'll get paid. Unfortunately I can't easily return to Zurich from Australia once we're back there to deregister!

Thanks for any advice...

I'll respond to some of my own questions and hopefully it will be of some use to people that find themselves in a similar situation!

Firstly, you may deregister at the Stadthaus up to a month in advance of when you're leaving and they will give you a leaving certificate stamped with the leaving date. You copy and send this to your health insurance company to get it discontinued etc.

Secondly, you may deregister from abroad. If you're in Australia etc you may post your permit, CHF 20 and a request for deregistration to the Stadthaus and they will post the leaving certificate to your Australian address. The other way to do it is to give your permit and CHF 20 and a letter of authorisation to a friend and they can go into the Stadthaus and do your deregistration for you, posting on your leaving certificate.

The people at the Stadthaus are very friendly and will give out excellent help in English over the phone.