Corresspondence mail address with Swiss tax after leaving Switzerland

Finance, Taxes, Banking, Insurance and Retirement
1

Recently I left Switzerland going back to my home country. To my surprise, the community office told me that I need representative in Switzerland (Swiss address) to handle my taxes (permit B Quellesteuer but I needed to start filing declarations on my because of the limit > 125k) even though I told them my home country address.

I’ve pretty much have already filed 2 declarations my own 2022 and 2023, so only one year 2024 has left which I’ll do by April 2025. However, they told me that it’s not enough to have swiss post mail forwarding abroad for 1 year.

So they asked me to use some swiss address of my friends, relatives in Switzerland which I don’t have. Is there any other option other than using costly rather lawyer or maybe accounting / tax advisor firm? Any advice?

2

There are mail forwarding companies that will give you a street address. I’ve never used one but just do a search.

3

Had this issue and was super annoying. I could use my parents so did not bother to fight this amongst the million other things one has going on.

Its also a matter of privacy… Would not want your tax info with just anyone…
Also whoever you chose has to sign that they represent you and this has some liability…

So I would tell them you have no one that you could trust with such matters and that you have provided a perfectly valid way to contact you, plus there is email in this day and age and that you consider this matter sorted.

And see where you get to :wink:

1 Like
4

Unfortunately, pretty much nowhere. Just after 1 month and half, I got email reminder from my community about missing address. They don’t accept anything than post address ( but they sent it via email ), no fax, no nothing. I think I’ll try to use http://swissmailbox.com/ Argh swiss government bureaucracy at its finest moment. Just because they want to spare few francs they force me to use 120+ chf pro year services. In Poland we use digital correspondence and digital signatures. I’m really starting to appreciate my origin country which is quite ironic

5

60 CHF per month for swissmailbox is a lot. Are there any alternatives?

6

Have a look at the Swiss Post scanning and email forwarding here: ePost for SMEs - handle business communications digitally
They seem to charge per piece and there is mention that some tax authorities use it.

Ymmv

7

I took the starter option 10 chf per month which is still significant (1 CHF incoming and some 0.5 chf afaik for one page scanning). I expect not that much post traffic from swiss tax office :expressionless:

8

Will they even accept that? If they said you need a “representative”?

You can pay a few hundred for an accountant to file your tax return. I’d have asked them to receive my documents and file for me for a couple of hundred.

9

I got following response in German about exactly this question: does it need only to just be deliverable via swiss post mail or it needs physical, living representative doing some legal actions in my name. That’s their response I got (in German and I cut the names).

Zustellungen müssen auf dem Postweg erfolgen. Es muss sich um eine Zustelladresse in der Schweiz handeln, wo die Dokumente physisch hingeschickt werden. Weitere Fragen richten Sie bitte an das Kantonale Steueramt.

So it would suggest it just needs to be ‘Swiss post deliverable’ and so far I didn’t get any complaints. If it changes, I’ll reply here as well with the update.