Tax optimization by canton

Every Swiss canton applies its own rates and quirks on top of federal tax. Pick your canton to see the year-end deductions, contributions, and timing moves that apply for tax year 2026.

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How much should you set aside?

Enter your revenue, expenses and canton and get the monthly AVS and income tax amounts — plus a reality check against your AVS instalments.

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How SoloLedger works out your estimate

Two calculations sit behind every figure on these pages and in the app. Neither is a tax return — they are estimates precise enough to act on before the bill arrives.

AVS/AHV on self-employed income (2026)

Self-employed contributions follow the sliding scale in AHV/IV Merkblatt 2.02, valid from 1 January 2026: 10.0% (AHV 8.1 + IV 1.4 + EO 0.5) on income from CHF 60'500, falling along a degressive scale to 5.371% between CHF 10'100 and CHF 60'500. Below CHF 10'100 you pay the minimum contribution of CHF 530 a year. Your compensation fund adds an administrative surcharge on top, capped by law at 5% of the contributions.

Federal scale, then your canton's multiplier

Income tax starts from the federal scale for the tax year, applied to your profit after deductible expenses. The cantonal and communal share is then modelled with your canton's multiplier — which is why the same profit produces very different totals from one canton to the next. Multipliers are approximate: they vary by municipality and by marital status.

What this is not

An estimate, not tax advice, and not a filed return. The AVS figures come from Merkblatt 2.02 (valid 1 January 2026) and the BSV amounts for 2026; the canton figures are official values we re-verify each year. Confirm anything decisive with your trustee or your cantonal tax office.

The AVS instalment trap

You pay AVS during the year as provisional instalments, based on the income you estimated. The definitive contributions are only set once your tax assessment exists — in practice about two years later. If the year went better than the estimate your instalments were built on, the difference arrives as a single bill, long after the money has been spent.

There is a second cost. If your instalments came in 25% or more below the definitive contributions, interest of 5% a year is charged retroactively from 1 January of the second year after the contribution year (Art. 41bis AHVV). There is no franc threshold — the 25% gap is the trigger. Telling your compensation fund that your income has risen, and having the instalments raised, is enough to avoid it.

SoloLedger addresses this in two places. In the app, the safe-to-spend panel reads your paid invoices and expenses, projects the year, and shows an AVS reality check: what your instalments assume you earn, what your figures imply, and how much to park each month so the definitive bill is already covered. The public calculator runs the same arithmetic from three numbers, without an account.

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The levers you still have before 31 December

The optimization checklist in the app sorts its rules into four families. Here are the families — the amounts, limits and canton particularities live on your canton's page and in the app.

Contributions

Pillar 3a is the single largest deduction for most self-employed people: up to CHF 7'258 if you also have a 2nd pillar, or up to 20% of net income (capped) if you do not. 2026 is also the first year you can buy back a missed 3a year, once the current year is paid in full. The money has to be on the account before 31 December.

Deductions

Business costs you have already paid but never booked: a share of rent and utilities for a dedicated home workspace, vehicle and travel costs, meals away from your usual workplace, health and accident premiums up to a canton-specific cap, and interest on business debt. Most of these are worth exactly what your receipts prove, which is why the ledger matters more than the checklist.

Timing

Some items count in the year they are paid, not the year they are owed: settle your provisional AVS instalments before 31 December and they land in this year. Equipment under CHF 1'000 can normally be written off immediately; above that you depreciate, so buying in December rather than January moves the first tranche forward a full year.

Structure

If you are VAT-registered, the method you file under is a yearly decision: the net tax rate method (Saldosteuersatz) often wins when your costs are low relative to revenue, the effective method when your input tax is high. A switch only takes effect at the start of a tax period, so the review belongs in December rather than March.

All 26 cantons

Every canton page carries its official multiplier, the filing and extension deadlines, and the local particularities that change the answer for tax year 2026.

Estimates only, not tax advice. Canton/commune multipliers are approximate and vary by municipality and marital status — confirm figures with your trustee or cantonal tax office.