What is the best way to educate oneself in declaring taxes in Switzerland (canton Zug in particular)?
I will have to pay my taxes alone as of this year (before it was done by accountants of my ex-spouse) and I would like to attempt to do it all by myself, so need to learn how. My question is to those who do not outsource this: what way to learn would you recommend? Are there any courses by cantonal tax authorities? Or should I better go to tax advisors and ask to teach me (is there such service)?
I am on C-permit, 100% employed, have kids, mortgage, car leasing, as for income sources: besides the salary alimony will be paid.
The tax filing software that Zug uses (very similar to other cantons) is quite straightforward. I have done it myself a couple of years in a row now and no issues. There are instructions and clarifications included (in German).
So, depending on the complexity of your financial situation, it is definitely manageable.
I cant talk about Zug but based on my experience with Zurich, it is probably straight forward. There is a pdf explaining every possible field/option and in the worst case you can call them and ask for clarifications.
As my Swiss neighbors told me, when it comes to possible tax deductions:
probieren > studieren
If all this fails you can still go to a tax advisor, he will do the declaration for you and you will keep the copy so that next year you only need to change the new numbers (e.g. if you got a raise etc.)
I used it in 2011 to do my first return in Zurich and carried on using the principles when we moved to SZ in 2015. Admittedly when we bought property a few years ago and did a lot of renovations, we switched to getting a local accountant doing it, to make sure the deductions were maximised, but the forms still look the same.
Make sure you get billed 50/50 in two separate years, or spread them over more than two if you can, to increase the deductions' effect on the tax bill.
In addition to the excellent suggestions above, I would add one other that helped me tremendously in my learning journey when I started to do it all by myself :
Start with your previous year’s tax return along with the supporting documents that were submitted (hopefully you have a copy of the full stack) and try to understand where each number in the tax return that the accountant prepared came from e.g. salary number comes from a specific line on the salary certificate provided by employer, bank interest earned comes from certificate issued by the bank, etc.
It took me some time to understand what comes from where, but once I had mastered this I had the confidence that I could prepare and submit my own tax return for the most part. Of course I still had to learn afresh how to handle new categories of income/expenses that I had never previously encountered and how to learn to use the software.
Thanks! Yeah, that was the first thing I did - took the copies from the 2019 and 2020 declarations and got lost there What's good is - a lot of the complicated stuff like investments, shares etc. is not relevant for me, which should simplify the matter, but, say, the alimony part is completely new and isn't reflected on the family declarations. But you are absolutely right - I can learn the basics from these old forms for sure!
I would use the tax software, but after you have completed it get an appointment with tax specialist to go over what you said.
I been doing my tax since I came to Switzerland, some 20+ years and I made plenty of mistakes. The ones I made in their favour they rejected, the ones I made in my favour they ignored, bewared... when I finally got around to checking what I been putting down a few years ago, I discovered I had been over paying taxes for a decade or more... use the software, but book an an hour with the a specialist to go over what you put in.
If your declaration is prepared and submitted by a fiduciaire there is far less chance it will be examined so closely as it is assumed these people know what they are doing....( )
If you submit yourself, there is a good chance they may come asking some questions.
Zug asks for all your documents to be attached with your tax declaration and will adjust your numbers for you. They provide a list for what they changed and the reason. I was quoted around 1k to submit our joint tax declaration due to the 'complexity' but I think they added some more based on seeing our income/assets 😡
Make sure that you write down the instructions for yourself for the next years. Then you will not have to figure out how to fill in the same complicated fields next year and save yourself a lot of time.
I live in a different canton, and this is true here as well. We have always done our taxes ourselves; last year I reversed two numbers in the "wealth" spreadsheet by mistake, they caught it and corrected it, no issues. What we put down has always been very close to the number they came up with, but they do go through everything and adjust.
It also focuses specifically on ZH, but I think overall it will give you some relevant points.
Ultimately a tax declaration boils down to two things: declare all your liabilities + deduct as much deductions as you can. In my experience, the first part is easy and it is the one that the tax office will care about (and will correct if needed), but what you also want is to deduct as much as possible - and the tax office won’t really go out of their way to do that for you.
Any X CHF that you don’t deduct but it would’ve been accepted - you are loosing “X * marginal tax rate” real CHF, so the opportunity cost must be huge. So my advice is to read as much stuff online as you can and research anything you think you might be deducting (and if in doubt - try it, honestly & transparently with documentation and explanation - and see if it’s accepted)