My fiance and I sent in the forms to request a postponement on returning our tax forms to Ticino Canton - this was only about a week before the deadline but I did apologise for this short notice on the postponement form (my fiance works in Italy and is taxed at source and we thought the forms would be relatively straightforward but realised not when we translated them)! Obviously the deadline for sending the forms in has now passed but we haven't heard from the tax office and we're wondering if we should have expected to by now or not. Just concerned about if they're likely to say no, particularly since we sent the postponement forms so late.

get a tax agent. Easiest way to sort things out - the speak the language, know the rules, and have people who they can contact...

Yes, that's our plan now, hence asking for the postponement, but when we first received the forms we thought it wasn't a problem... Blame it on the lack of sleep with a new baby!

I asked the Geneva Tax Office for two postponements due to the complexity of filling in the forms alone (new frontalier tax rules, I can now claim mileage). They were not quick in replying, but extremely gracious and obliging. I have heard it is the same elsewhere, so nothing to worry about, IMHO.

Good news - just got letters through this morning agreeing to the standard postponement till September! Let's hope it doesn't cost us a fortune to get the help to fill them in...

I always send in the postponement request on the last day of April, no need to apologize.

What do you find difficult about the forms?

It takes me about 30 minutes to do them.

You can also go the the tax office in Lugano, and they will help you fill them out (for free), which is what I did the first time.

Tom

My fiance works in Italy and is taxed at source there so we're not even sure if we should be filling out these forms or not as he's already paid tax on his salary there (and there's some sort of reciprocal tax arrangement) and we have no income earned in CH at all (I'm not working at the moment). We do have a mortgaged house in UK and various pension plans there etc though. We're worried if we fill the forms out incorrectly that we'll get taxed twice - I think it's an unusual situation as most people living here on the border live in Italy and work in CH not the other way round. So we're confused both because our Italian is pretty limited (and Google Translate isn't much use for tax forms) and because we don't know how the tax situation works as it's our first year here!

Might be worth our going to the office in Lugano though if you say they were helpful - do they speak English there?

I was fortunate that there was a guy there that spoke perfect English (think he had spent some time in California, but that was many years ago.

Even if you have no income, you still need to fill out the forms, so I would definitely go ask, though as you are in Vacallo you should be dealing with the office in Mendrisio:

Ufficio circondariale di tassazione Mendrisio

Via Beroldingen 11
6850 Mendrisio

tel. +41 91 816 44 11
fax +41 91 816 44 09


Tom