Hi all,
Recently i bought an old house in south swtizerland that needs renovation. My plan is to do a lot of work my self but I was wondering if I can get some help from friends. I find sparse information online on what is acceptable. For example i found that anyone (eu or non-eu) can come to CH for up to 3 months as contractor and simply has to be registered on a system if the work is for more that 8 days. Can anyone confirm?
I guess in principle they can come and help me without notifiying anyone, but then i am not sure thats the situation with insurances etc.
Any help would be valuable.
Thanks!
Cheers!
Leonidas
The short version:
as an employer, you will need to comply with Swiss employment laws.
This means paying contributions/taxes, getting insurance for your employees, etc.
Electrical installations need to be signed off by a Swiss registered electrician. Same for plumbing. Work will need to be done in line with local code - finding an electrician/plumber who can guide you BEFORE you start the work, who is then willing to certify it after is crucial (speaking from experience).
Expect your neighbors to report you, and get a visit from someone to check.
EDIT: If they are non-EU, you will also need to get a work permit, which could be challenging/expensive. Failure to do so, if caught, would have dire consequences both for you and them.
Thanks Spinal for the quick response.
As you describe it, it seems is one general rule for everything but I can clrealy find sites where it dissects to different durations for more or less than 90 days.
Here for example :
https://contractortaxation.com/work-…s-switzerland/
“Any foreign contractor who has less than 90 days’ stay or per year will not need a work permit but must register online if working more than 8 days.”
Similar info can be found elsewhere as well
Still, what Spinal wrote on insurance etc and installations applies. Iirc you also need to pay according to Swiss standards.
That is only for EU nationals who are sent here by their employers to do work or who are self-employed and come here to do work. It doesn’t apply to non-EU nationals.
https://www.sem.admin.ch/sem/en/home…verfahren.html
ok yes I see. so not possible...
From the website provided above:
Eight-day notification-free period
The activity of posted workers and self-employed service providers is subject to a notification requirement if the work in Switzerland exceeds eight days within a given calendar year. In the following branches, the activity is always subject to a notification requirement from the first day onwards regardless of the duration of work:
Construction and secondary contract work
Gardening and landscaping
Hotel, restaurant and catering
Cleaning in companies and households
Monitoring and security services
Itinerant trade (exceptions: trade fairs and circuses)
Sex industry
If you will have some friends coming from within the EU to work in your house, they always need to be registered if they come as paid workers. If this is just one or two mates who come for th weekend and break a wall and have a couple of beers while at it, I wouldn't worry.
Different when there's a foreign builders van parked in front of your house for a week. Although that also might depend on the region, our house is currently being renovated by the builder's equivalent of the UN, we have seen Portugese, Spanish, French, Germans, Argentinians, Bosnians Italians and more..
Thanks so much!
On the same topic...would an umbrella company help? I am completely ignorant if this is remotely relevant :P
Be careful, it may not be as cheap as you think
yes thats why I am trying to collect as much information as possible :P
It might help on this thread if you where a little more specific. You want to bring workers in from where? To do what exactly?
I know of a local private school that thought they would save a buck on this sort of thing and got some Polish electricians to rewire the place. It looked good on paper, with the only hiccup the small fact that all the plugs they installed were polish, nobody it seemed bothered to ask them to install Swiss plugs.