Hello,
I am unhappy about the Vaud tax office. I have B permit and I earn 120k yet they requested me to submit full tax form for the last year.
In fact I did not even know what the letter mean until I showed it to a swiss neighbour. Then I have sent them email asking why did they ask me for it since I am taxed at source. I have even quoted their web page
http://www.vd.ch/themes/etat-droit-f...-a-chf-120000/
where they clearly state that people with salary above 120k have to fill the tax form. I have got no answer except confirmation that they received my email.
The full tax form is very complicated to me. I would expect to just copy and paste information from my salary statement as I don't have any other income and I don't care about tax returns. Unfortunately it is not so easy and the form is only in French. Perhaps I would need to find a tax advisor to help me fill the form.
Yet it is very frustrating that "I have to do it" and/or bear the cost of the tax advisor. I thought so far that the Swiss law is quite clear. Anyone have been in such situation? I believe that I have the right by the local law to not fill the tax form as I am taxed at source.
I think the Swiss tax form is the easiest I have ever seen. Often you can find an online tool. It will guide you through the steps.
Whether you care about tax returns or not is completely irrelevant. And being taxed at source does not mean that you never have to complete a tax income return document.
Not sure where you have lived before but I have had to do tax returns in ANY country I worked in........ Whining that you do not like it does not resolve the issue
I think filing a tax return actually is, strictly speaking, optional, even if you have to do it by law. Sure, they'll send you a ton of scary reminder letters at first. But eventually, if you don't cooperate, they just have to assess you based on whatever data they've got on you (which probably already shows you earn >120k), and send you a tax bill based on that assessment.
Exactly 120'000,-? What about, say, interest from your bank account? Even 5 Rp from it will tip the scale into 'over 120k' income direction.
Also, if OP was not here for the full year, the tax return may have to be done with less than the 126 k income
Wait what, interest from a bank account adds to salary income??? Yes, I get exactly 120k. Well, I have to check it then. I think the interest rate was 0, but maybe it was something like 0.05% and generated 1 cent over the year
Still I am unhappy that they keep silent and so keep me in doubts/hopes that they will just reply "oh, sorry indeed, some mistake, you don't have to fill anything".
They sent you that tax return document so they expect you to file. In what language did you send your email?
Yes, any income you have, interest, savings account, house, stock, investment funds, your worldwide income counts towards taxes here
This is the page where you download the Vaud Tax software (official software used for the declaration).
http://www.vd.ch/themes/etat-droit-f...-vaudtax-2015/
If your situation is as simple as you say it is, why not ask a neighbour to help you fill it in. You will not be the first person to need some help. It will not take long.
If not, a tax adviser will cost you CHF 250-350 to fill it in for you (you can find cheaper people from websites such as Anibis.ch). I have a name if you need it.
I have earned 4.1 chf interest on my account from last year. Amazing profit
OK, I get it, no point to wait for anything. It's Swiss precision in taxes.
Thank you all, you have been very helpful.
Why not see if the tax office has someone there who can help you fill it in? Here in Fribourg canton they actually run special evenings in February in several cities in the canton where people can come along and ask questions, get advice, etc. It never hurts to ask - but I’d do it in French, google translate is your friend. Ask if there is someone who speaks English that you could make an appointment to meet with to go over the form.
We can close this thread now.
Tax form s in official language of the canton, not their problem if you can't understand, but it is your problem if you don't return it correctly.
The tax deducted at source is a withholding tax to be eventually set against your income tax assessment, when one is raised by the tax office. In cases where your income is below 120K they don't bother as it is usually not worth their while, but that does not mean that they can't if the so wish.
I did click-through in the official Vaudtax application. To my surprise it yields tax 2k bigger than what I have paid at source. Is it normal or did I forgot to tick some check box? I went through it twice but I don't see anything I could add. I basically entered only the figures from my salary slip and have chosen default commute cost.
Where such difference comes from? Is it because Lausanne is the most expensive commune?
How about health insurance costs, work expenses, education, meals deductions? Pauschal amounts are claimable even when you didn't spend a single rappen. No receipts needed. They could easily make up 5-10k worth of deductions, which translates into several k's of tax savings. If you have no idea what you can deduct maybe spending a couple of hundred on a tax consultant once isn't such a bad idea
Exactly. Puzzled have a look on the Vaud canton’s website under Impots and see if you can find a similar document/PDF to this one:
http://www.fr.ch/scc/files/pdf82/Ins…ns_2015_FR.pdf
This is the booklet that we get sent each year with our tax return and it tells you what you have to put on the return and what deductions are possible. You may have been sent one with this return of course, if so then work your way through it to make sure you’ve included all the deductions you can make.
It’s not just your salary either, you need to include any bank account figures, pension if you get one, investments, value of your car if you own it outright, artwork, etc.
A deduction is not equal to the tax saving amount !
Chf 10k will give you about Chf 1k tax saving, unless you fall into a lower tax bracket where the saving MAY be a bit more but certainly not "several k's"
Wrong. At 100k income in Lausanne you reach 35% marginal tax rate [1], which means 10k deductions will net you 3.5k savings.
[1] https://www.comparis.ch/steuern/steu...vergleich.aspx
Assumptions: Lausanne VD, single, no wealth, no kids, no church
100k income: 23797 Fr taxes
90k income: 20315 Fr
Marginal rate: (23797-20315)/10000 = 34.82%
We pay an accountant 130chf every year to do our tax return. I reckon at 120K you could splash out on that!?
This topic has been covered...many times....
Earn over 120k as a Non-EU and you'll have to do a tax return 'on top of' the normal tax-at-source.
Depending on where you live, the amounts of deductions and assets you have, your eventual assessment could be higher or lower than the tax-at-source.
It should not be expensive to get a local tax advisor to put together your tax return if you don't have the language skills. Ours sends us an email with a checklist (in English) of what to provide, a form to fill (in English) which summarises all the key information for them, and they charge us around 150-250chf to prepare what is actually two returns (well, a married family household)...
If you don't provide the information and do your own returns, they will assess you themselves and you don't have the opportunity to claim any deductions... I would not recommend doing that (besides, it looks bad when you don't follow the rules).
Zurich canton now allows lodging online in English...but we've still opted to use a professional. It provides some margin of protection for us that we haven't made any mistakes and we have their advice. In fact, they've helped us a lot without charging anything extra, in the case where our employers were somewhat confused with the appropriate handling of the 'tax at source' and also 'fringe benefits' - free meals at work, deduction on school fees, are taxable and our employers had 'issues' with handling this properly. Those things don't normally come up if you're a local employee because the employer doesn't deduct at source...so they have no idea what actually is needed...
You certainly mean higher tax "bracket" (No real bracket as it is a sliding scale). Most cantonal taxes are progressive, the more you earn, the more, more taxed you pay. Flat tax is also possible. Degressive tax is not allowed based Swiss constitution and Federal Court Ruling 2P.43/2006.
Lausanne, unmarried, no kids, no church:
taxable income == tax
310k == 118'456.80
300k == 113'517.55
delta == 4939.25
120k == 31'423.65
110k == 27'597.70
delta == 3825.95
20k == 2'455.55
10k == 865.15
delta == 2369.40
And even for low income it equates to thousands of francs in tax savings in canton Vaud. It looks like canton Vaud has quite a steep marginal tax rates for low incomes.