It can be a crazy quest to Understand everything that has to be paid and declared when employing a Nanny, Au Pair, or a house employee. There will be agencies who can take care of all the formalities for you, but I find that their price is double what I actually need to pay to tax authorities. So I would like to offer everything that I learned on this topic, and I'm sorry if this is incomplete. Also, this is based on information I found for Kanton Zurich. It can change from canton to canton. If you're based outside of Kanton Zurich, you'll have to do some searching for your kanton. Here we go:
A great first reading to do, in English, is this:
https://www.ahv-iv.ch/p/2.06.e
It covers a lot of the basics.
House employee who lives with you
Housing an employee full time, providing food and housing, is considered a benefit valued at 990 CHF a month. Or, if it's only on certain days, 33 CHF a day. More details on page 3 of the above link (if you provide only certain meals, etc, you have the whole breakdown)
What it means is:
- if you've agreed with a live-in AuPair for a gross salary of 1000 CHF/month + housing and board, then to the authorities the gross monthly salary to be taxed is 1990 CHF/month
- if you've agreed with a live-in nanny for an hourly salary of 25 CHF/hour, you can then deduct to what you pay to the employee 990 CHF/month when you provide full board
Social Security and income tax
For every employee, social security must be paid. If the employee holds an L or B permit, you also need to withhold an income tax. To withhold the income tax, you have two solutions:
- you can either do some research on Zurich tax website and find out exactly how much you need to withhold
- you can do a simplified procedure with SVA, that allows you to pay social fees and income tax together, with a flat rate of 5% for the income tax. This is what I choose to do, because it cuts a lot of admin, and then your employee can file a tax declaration to get some tax money back if the 5% is too much (it usually is)
The social fees are:
- AHV/IV/EO, 10.25%, half paid by the employer, half by the employee
- Arbeitslosenversicherung, 2.2%, half paid by the employer, half by the employee
- Income tax witholding: 5%, paid fully by the employee
See calculations after next section.
Work accident insurance
As an employer, you also need to purchase a professional accident insurance. For many years, I thought I just had to pay the accident insurance portion of a personal health insurance of the employee. This is wrong. The proper insurance to buy is UVG. You will need to buy it from an insurance provider. You can google "UVG versicherung." If the wages are under a certain sum, you can easily buy it online, for a year. If not, you have to ask for a quote. I got a quote from AXA-Winterthur, I thought it was quite expensive (around 1000 CHF / year). I found an association called "Kaderverband" in which you can register for a one time fee of 50 CHF. They do UVG and it was half price from AXA Winterthur.
When insurer gives you a quote, there are two parts:
BU and NBU, which are both a % of the gross salary. This will vary from insurer to insurer. BU, you have to pay yourself, annually. NBU, you have to pay the insurance, but you withdraw it monthly from your employee. So let's say the insurer gave you an NBU quote of 1.122 %, you pay the insurer for one year of salary, but you withdraw that percentage from gross salary on employee pay slip.
Putting it all together for gross salary under 1 762.50 CHF/ month (21 150 CHF/year)
When you pay your employee the salary, you take out their share of these fees, plus the full board if necessary. For example, if you hire an AuPair and agree on a gross salary of 770 CHF + full board, then the gross salary to be declared is : 770+990=1760 CHF
I recommend using the form available here:
https://www.svazurich.ch/pdf/monatslohnabrechnung.pdf
It does the calculations for you.
Gross: 1760
AHV 5.125% employee share: 90.20
ALV 1.1% employee share: 19.36
NBU 1.122% emlpoyee share: 19.75 (this percentage varies from insurer to insurer)
income tax withholding 5% employee share: 88.00
Full board, employee share: 990
1760
-90.20
-19.36
- 19.75
-88
-990
=552.70
Net salary to give to your employee: 552.70 CHF
Now, be careful, you need to SAVE your share of these fees + your employee's share (since you're withholding from them) every month. Because at the end of the year, you need to fill a declaration with SVA Zurich stating the gross salary of house employees, and you will be expected to pay:
- AHV/IV/EO, 10.25%
- Arbeitslosenversicherung, 2.2%
- Income tax witholding: 5%
There are also some additional fees (rather minor) and to be honest, I never understood where they come from, and I'm tired of searching So I just pay them.
In order to make your SVA declaration with the 5% tax withholding, you need to fill in this form and send it to SVA Zurich:
https://www.svazurich.ch/pdf/024.054_2017.pdf
2nd pillar for employees with gross salary over 1762.50 CHF/month
On top of all of this, if your employee has a gross salary over 1762.50 CHF/month or 21 150 CHF annually, you also need to set up a pension 2nd pillar contribution. This is called BVG.
Official documentation about BVG is here:
https://www.ahv-iv.ch/p/6.06.d (German)
https://www.ahv-iv.ch/p/6.06.f (French)
This is honestly tricky to set up. I called several insurers, who told me they didn't want to do 2nd pillars for nannies, that it wasn't their business model. Maybe you'll get luckier than me with insurers, you can google "BVG versicherung" Insurer told me to do it with SVA and SVA told me they don't do it
In the end, I ended up doing it with: "Stiftung Auffangeinrichtung BVG" (recommended by SVA). You can find how to set it up here:
http://www.chaeis.net/bvg-berufliche...anmeldung.html
click on "privat haushalt" to find the form to register yourself as household employer, and the employee entry form. They are very old fashion and do not correspond by email. Also, I don't think they speak English (I didn't try, as I speak French)
Part of the BVG contribution is paid for by employer, part is paid for by employee. You pay everything and then withdraw the employee contribution on their monthly salary.
Minimum Wages
Housework is one of the only professions with a minimum wage. The only documentation I found is this:
https://www.seco.admin.ch/dam/seco/d...en_2017_de.pdf
It goes from 18.90 CHF/hour to 20.75 CHF/hour depending on experience and qualification. We're talking just the minimum wage.
In Conclusion
Remember minimum wage, that full board is part of gross salary, then do your SVA declaration with income tax witholding, don't forget the UVG with BU and NBU and over a certain salary, the BVG.
I wish I had a memory technique to learn: SVAAHVUVGBUNBUBVG, but I don't.
Another "great" reading is this: https://www.svazurich.ch/internet/de...itgebende.html
Ultimately, if you don't want all this hassle, do it with an agency... It will be more expensive, but they will do everything. A good supplier I found is: https://quitt.ch/ (which is a great name, for when you quit on searching!)
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Good luck to all of you, I'm not a lawyer, this is just all the knowledge on the matter I have accumulated. Feel free to correct or complete. Don't sue me if it was wrong.