Hi all,

I am B-permit holder, living in Neuchatel, subjected to tax at source.
I would like to claim additional tax deduction, based on this form https://www.ne.ch/autorites/DFS/SCCO...entairesIS.pdf

Is there any one doing this claim before ?
It seems that there is no deduction for mortgage interest anymore ? as I have a house on mortgage abroad.

Also, can I claim deduction for lunch, commute cost to work ? if so, there is no space in the form to fill up , should I make a cover letter to list those additional deduction ..

Your experience sharing are much appreciated.
Thanks alot.

Did you read the instructions on the site they linked?


It’s a simplified declaration as opposed to a full declaration so only certain things are deductible and you need to provide them with documentary evidence for the deductions.

If you want to declare your mortgage interest you need to make a full declaration but then you would have to declare the value of the property under your assets and either the real ( if you rent it out) or notional ( if you don’t rent it out) rent under your income.

Lunches and travel to work are included on the full declaration form but as they are not on this form I assume they are not taken into account for the simplified one. You could try listing them under ‘autres’ and providing them with evidence for the expense and see what happens but my feeling is that you won’t get anywhere with that one.

I don't think foreign mortgage interest can be offset against Swiss income tax, only Swiss mortgage interest payments. If you do move to full declaration, bear in mind that the value of your foreign home will be used to calculate the band of your wealth tax as Belgianmum above highlighted (even if the house is exempt), and all your foreign assets and foreign income need to be declared to the Swiss tax authorities and are subject to wealth tax and income tax. So you may find yourself worse off than before, potentially. Source tax is clean and easy.

I also think that if you earn less than CHF 120K a year and do not own a house in Switzerland, as a B permit holder you may not be able to make a full tax declaration, rather than being subject to source tax or completing the simplified declaration that you linked.

Unless things have changed recently it is perfectly acceptable to declare foreign mortgage interest on a Swiss tax form. We did it for years until we sold our property in Belgium.

It works fine as well in Kanton Zurich to deduct the mortgage interest on a foreign property. Have been doing this for years.

As other posters commented, in order to file and claim for the type of additional tax relief you are looking for (mortgage interest) you will almst certainly need to submit the full tax declaration form. The simple tax form is not appropriate for that purpose, even with a cover letter. Everything that can be claimed will have a place somewhere on that form, as well as space for explanation if necessary.

I think the best thing to do here is to download the official Neuchatel Tax program (called Clic'n'Tax), fill it in and look at what it calculates your direct tax to be. You can then decide, based on whether this is higher or lower than your current impots a la source, whether or not it's worth filing a declaration. The application may be directly downloaded from:

https://www.ne.ch/autorites/DFS/SCCO...hargement.aspx

It is worth noting however that although the full tax form will allow you to claim things such as lunch and commuting expenses explicitly, the impots a la source tax rate is actually already an adjusted full tax rate which is supposed to already take account of most typical expenses such as these, which have hard cut-offs on the full tax form, so don't get your hopes up.

If you own a property abroad almost certainly you are eligible for full tax declaration. There is a wealth limit to be under simplified taxation. Once you cross the wealth limit (poverty line ), like 100k CHF wealth you are legally subject to full taxation. Commonly people 'forget' to declare that they have the wealth above the treshold Even if you own a 100k worth property with a mortgage your wealth is 100k for the tax purposes. You can later deduct your mortgage form the tax...

Net outcome is that you may gain something or loose something by switching to the full taxation but the amount on + or - would be less than 1k chf. I would be happy to be on simplified tax even if I would be paying 1k more than I could, because until you are on simplified tax, you are really free, the government knows nothing about you, i.e. you can even 'forget' about something and get by until the day they switch you to the full taxation because you got permit C

I am aware that there may be a full return form but I have not received any, probably I am new.
So I just think of using this short form for additional tax deduction.

You have a good point that I may need to declare the property value and tax band may increase.

Thank you.

I don't get any invitation to file the full form deduction, probably because I just started working in last Dec, though my yearly salary will be above the threshold 120k.

Thanks SlaveII, it is a good suggestion to try Clic'n'Tax.
I heard about it but did not know that we can use that software tool to simulate what would be the refundable amount, in our favour or against ? It is really cool if we can try that out before submitting the form.

Officially, to access the full form, one should get the invitation letter from the tax office with some code on that, right ?
In the tool Clic'n'Tax, how or where do I get the: Numero de Classement, and References number ?

You get the number from the tax office, you can’t use Clic and Tax without one.

You only started in December 2018? In that case I wouldn’t bother wasting my time with a tax declaration of any sort.

Thanks for the correction on foreign property mortgage interest deductability - I never knew that