Discover how much people like you have saved by switching from withholding tax to ordinary tax declaration.
These six profiles are calculated scenarios, not customer testimonials. The first names are fictitious, the situations composed from common cases, and the amounts produced by the same engine as the site's calculator. We do not publish user reviews, and we would rather say so than let you assume otherwise.
34 · Portugal
Situation
Single, daily transport costs
What tips this case
The daily commute and meals eaten out together exceed the share of professional expenses already built into the tariff. The gap is modest, but it repeats every year.
Deductions applied
saved per year
CHF2'100
28 · Spain
Situation
Married, 1 child, work expenses
What tips this case
The dependent child changes the tariff applied, and the professional expenses of waiting tables are added on top. The dual-income couple also opens a deduction of its own.
Deductions applied
saved per year
CHF1'600
31 · Tunisia
Situation
Single, long daily commute, pillar 3a
What tips this case
The pillar 3a at the ceiling carries this case on its own: withholding at source has no line for individual pension provision. The long commute does the rest.
Deductions applied
saved per year
CHF2'800
29 · Portugal
Situation
Married, 2 children, childcare costs
What tips this case
Mandatory continuing education is deducted separately, against receipts, and does not consume the flat rate for other professional expenses. Two children weigh on the social deductions.
Deductions applied
saved per year
CHF3'200
42 · Spain
Situation
Married, 3 children, daycare + pillar 3a
What tips this case
Three children and a day nursery: actual childcare costs are the heaviest item, and the one the withholding tariff ignores most completely. Pillar 3a adds to it.
Deductions applied
saved per year
CHF4'500
26 · Morocco
Situation
Single, in training, work expenses
What tips this case
Mandatory professional equipment here exceeds the flat rate for other expenses — common in trades that buy their own tools, and rare in office jobs.
Deductions applied
saved per year
CHF1'850
Every amount below is read from the table the calculator applies, never copied out by hand: when a ceiling changes, this page changes without anyone rewriting it. These are the limits of the direct federal tax; your canton applies its own alongside.
| Deduction | 2026 ceiling |
|---|---|
| Travel costs | up to CHF 3'300 |
| Meals away from home, without a canteen | up to CHF 3'200 |
| Meals with a subsidised canteen | up to CHF 1'600 |
| Other professional expenses | 3 % of net salary · at least CHF 2'000 · at most CHF 4'000 |
| Pillar 3a, with a pension fund | up to CHF 7'258 |
| Third-party childcare | up to CHF 25'800 |
| Dual-income couple | 50 % of the lower of the two incomes · at least CHF 8'600 · at most CHF 14'100 |
Three rules, and they hold for every page on this site.
The same engine as the calculator
The amounts come from the engine that serves the estimate, applied to the cantonal and communal tariffs actually imported. A page therefore cannot announce a result the calculation would contradict.
No ceiling written by hand
Deduction limits are read from the engine's tables at render time. A figure frozen in a sentence ages in silence; this one changes with the imported data.
Unfavourable cases stay on display
Several common profiles — single and living close to work, people with taxable wealth — lose money under ordinary taxation. We do not remove them from the examples.
The salary used for the canton pages comes from the FSO earnings structure survey, median for B permit holders. The profiles on this page are composed, and their deductions chosen to illustrate a mechanism.
4 questions
No, and it says so at the top of the page. They are scenarios composed from common situations and calculated by our engine. Publishing fake testimonials would expose us as much as it would mislead you — and on a tax subject, an unverifiable figure is worth nothing.
That is what the calculator is for. Six profiles do not cover sixteen cantons, two thousand municipalities and every family situation. The estimate applies your municipality's tariffs to your figures, in two minutes and without transmitting your data.
Because the withholding tariff already contains flat rates. What widens the gap is what the flat rate ignores: pillar 3a, actual childcare costs, a long commute, continuing education. A profile with none of those recovers nothing.
Yes, in both directions. The withholding tariff is calculated on a cantonal average of communal multipliers, whereas ordinary taxation applies the actual multiplier of your municipality. Depending on the address, the gap runs to hundreds of francs a year.