Last year I was looking for an independent advisor, who would help me with tax declaration. After a rough path with one and some research, I got rid of the naive concept of finding an independent advisor, and it's time to step into phase two of these:
Have you asked your tax office if they can help you go through the forms? I know here in Fribourg canton they used to run special evenings at various locations around the canton where people could come and ask for advice about filling them in. Once you know what you need for your particular declaration it’s easy to do them yourself unless your circumstances change a lot.
If "Roger the AI" is unable to work out what year we are in, I don't hold much hope for his ability to fill in the tax forms with any degree of competency. [](https://www.englishforum.ch/attachments/finance-banking-taxation/143279d1642590342-tax-declaration-taxly-vs-private-tax-2022-screenshot-2022-01-19-12.04.51.png)
Once as a young person earning above 120k for the first time. I think I paid less than Fr.200 for a my very uncomplicated declaration, and then I just copied and paste for the next years in Privatetax - made all the easier because the advisor used the same software.
Then I bought and sold properties and made a lot of renovations. I think I paid a tax adviser a bit more than 1k, but I paid almost no taxes that year thanks to his help!
Thank you kindly for all the answers. As I said, I already did that with professional last year and it was not a pleasant experience. Since I like the approach of small steps, I will use Taxly this year (English advantage and I'm simply curious) and then in the next one jump in into Private Tax.
Now, I see confusion with what I consider as an independent advisor:
I need to mark first that our tax situation was/is not the simplest one. Both parents working, kids in Kita. And the Kita deduction was the only reason I wanted to submit tax declaration, since by default we are taxed at source.
I exchanged a lot of emails with the advisor (documents and deduction discussions), what was the effort in itself, but at the end he came with conclusion that we should meet personally, otherwise it's impossible to finish the task. So I took half of the day free and came there with my wife. The discussion about the form and my documents took to my surprise not more than 10 mins (our drive in one direction took an hour). After that he presented us ready contract for Swiss Life 3rd pillar. That topic, his explanation and hot recommendations took the rest of the meeting, around 50 mins. At the end he wanted us to sign that contract at once, assuring there is nothing better nowhere. I never make decisions this way, so just said - no, I need to think about that. After that he immediately took papers back from our sight and was not willing to let us take them home
Two days later I received by post the full package I should sent to tax office. And guess what - the Kita costs were nowhere mentioned nor deducted. I paid 160 CHF for that service.
I hope that made it a little more clear what I consider "an independent advisor"