Hi,

I was an International postdoc with permit B in Lausanne from Jan 2017- April 2018 and then left Switzerland. My annual salary was 80000 CHF.

Recently, Nov 2020, I received an email from my previous employer in Lausanne saying that I should pay them back around 3000 CHF for Impot a la source. I checked my payslip for 2018 and there is no information about such a reduction and neither in my contract. I also checked my contract and payslip for 2017 and never have paid such tax during 2017.

I searched in google and found out that Impot a la source is a tax paid by employer to Canton and it is the job of employer to deduct this from salary of employee and also inform the employee about that. Employer should mention this in payslip.

As during my employment, my employer has not inform me about that neither by signing a form or my payslip, can I refuse paying this bill to my employer? I will appreciate it if somebody help me about that or if you have a similar experience, please share with me.

It doesn't have to be mentioned in the contract as this is a would be deduction based on a law. Like social insurance contributions.

Legally:
You got more salary than what was due by contact and law. This is know as unjust enrichment. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unjust_enrichment You will have to reimburse the part which was paid in error. Statue of limitations for unjust enrichment is three to ten years. The three years start from the date the party in error became aware of the error.

If you still reside in Switzerland or intend to come back to Switzerland or need a good standing with your former employer you should think about paying the demand. If reside outside of Switzerland, have no intend to come back to Switzerland or an other European country, and you do not care what your former employer thinks about you you might not pay as International debt recovery is a lengthy and cumbersome process and your former employer might not peruse the debt.

__________________
"Okay, I just hope we don't wake up on Mars or something surrounded by millions of little squashy guys."

Hello,

Indeed, the deduction of the impôt à la source must be on the payslip. Do you remember if you filled up a formular where you declared civil status (married, not married) , number of children, religion? They need this info to estimate your tax amount.

There's another important document called certificat de salair/lohnausweiss, this is an example of the document https://www.estv.admin.ch/dam/estv/f...rechts-dfi.pdf

Field number 12 in the certificat the salaire is impôt à la source. If this document says they deducted the tax, there might not be a problem in first place, just a confusion in the HR department.

But, 3000 CHF seems low for 16 months at 80K annual. You might be liable for more, check what should have been the tax according to civil status, etc. I guess HR applied the wrong barème and they're just applying the correction https://www.vd.ch/themes/etat-droit-...emes/#c2025841