Last update: 17.09.2024 08:33
The first lockdown began in Switzerland on March 16, 2020. A lot has changed since then. What tax deductions can you claim due to coronavirus? How do working from home, changes to your commute and meal costs affect your professional expenses in your tax return? And which deduction makes sense for you? We show you what applies in the different cantons. Discover how you can get the most out of it.
2021 is also an exceptional year for the tax authorities. If it is an exception, why should everything be done differently? The tax authorities in most cantons are therefore taking a largely pragmatic approach and accepting the usual deductions for flat-rate professional expenses, travel expenses and additional costs for meals away from home. However, as always, the regulations depend on the individual canton. Below you will find the corona tax deductions of the individual cantons to fold out.
Corona tax deductions: Home office
The flat-rate deduction for work-related expenses is 3% of your net salary (minimum CHF 2,000, maximum CHF 4,000 per year). It is designed to make things easier for you and the tax authorities and covers all expenses for special work clothing, tools including IT hardware and software, specialist literature and private work-related expenses. IT hardware and software, specialist literature and your private study. You think that’s not enough and you have higher costs?
In principle, several conditions must be met at the same time for you to be able to deduct a home office in your tax return.
Firstly, your work must be carried out regularly and to a significant extent from home. Depending on the canton, 1/3 of the time or 40% is the minimum.
Secondly, there is no workplace available to you at the company or it was not possible or reasonable for you to work there. You can invoke this at the latest since the obligation to work from home in the second lockdown.
Thirdly , you must use a room at home primarily as a workspace, i.e. you must have a room for work that goes beyond your family living requirements. The condition is now often considered to be fulfilled if there is no separate room available for professional activities, but a room has been permanently converted for this purpose. However, Bern is strict here: a workplace in a room otherwise used for private purposes (bedroom, living room, anteroom) is not sufficient.
How much tax deduction can I make for a corona home office?
The deduction is usually calculated as follows: Rent or imputed rental value per year divided by (number of rooms + 2). Example: you pay CHF 2,200 rent per month for your 4.5 room apartment. The deduction for the study is then:
2'200 * 12 / (4.5 + 2) = 4'062 CHF
So 4,062 francs for the whole year or 338.50 francs per month.
Depending on the canton, you can apply a lump sum of CHF 300 (e.g. Bern) per year for ancillary costs or directly increase the rental costs or the imputed rental value. In other words, you can include rental costs incl. Incidental costs or increase the imputed rental value by 10%.
If you no longer know exactly how many days you spent working from home in 2021, make a breakdown to the best of your knowledge and belief. This corresponds to the usual procedure in the tax return, which is a self-declaration.
Corona tax deductions: travel expenses
Many commuters were effectively traveling much less. Nevertheless, most tax authorities accept the usual travel expense deductions for public transport. This is because the effort involved in checking and accounting for the actual days spent working from home would be too great.
For the period from March 1 to December 31, some tax authorities will also accept costs for using your car without proof of reasonableness in addition to the costs for annual public transport season tickets. Even if you did not drive to work every day as before, the tax authorities will accept the costs for the usual travel expense deductions. For commuters with otherwise high deductions for car travel costs, this is a de facto tax gift: you deduct expenses for something for which no expenses were actually incurred.
How much can I deduct if I drove to work instead of using public transportation?
The Corona travel expense tax deduction differs from canton to canton. Bern accepts this. In Zurich, however, the following applies: If your employer has recommended this or you have driven to work by car for fear of using public transport, you can unfortunately only deduct the cost of the public transport season ticket. This is because the conditions for deducting car costs remain unchanged: at the employer’s request, time savings of more than 1 hour per day or no public transport service. If you belong to a risk group and therefore used the car, you can claim the car travel costs. And if the public transport for your journey to work was canceled or discontinued, you can deduct the car costs for this time.
You can find out more about this in the explanations below for the respective cantons.
What tax deductions are available for unemployment?
You must pay tax on your unemployment benefit. You can therefore deduct the actual costs incurred during your unemployment in connection with your job search. You can also deduct the costs of further training from your taxes if you continue your education while unemployed.
The lump sum for other professional expenses, on the other hand, is based on your net salary according to your salary statement. Because the daily unemployment benefit is a replacement income, you cannot claim a lump sum for other professional expenses.
Can I make tax deductions for hygiene masks and corona tests?
Yes, you can deduct hygiene masks as medical expenses. However, this only has a tax-reducing effect if the medical expenses exceed a deductible of 5% of your net income. Firstly, you must have paid for masks yourself. Secondly, you can only claim costs for the period during which you are required to wear a mask by the Federal Council or a doctor.
No, you cannot generally deduct the costs of coronavirus tests. This is because the federal government bears the costs for corona tests due to illness. Costs for corona tests for professional reasons must generally be borne by your employer. If you have taken coronavirus tests privately (e.g. to visit relatives, to travel abroad or to find out whether you have already had coronavirus), these are costs of living that you cannot deduct.
These coronavirus tax deductions for professional expenses apply in the cantons
Tip: The drop-down arrows open selected deductions.
Click on the canton link to access the regulations of the respective canton.
In your 2020 and 2021 tax return, you can claim your professional expenses (travel costs between home and work, additional costs for meals and flat-rate deduction for other professional expenses) as they would otherwise have been incurred – without measures to combat coronavirus. This means that the professional expenses are not reduced by corona-related home office days (yay!), but in return you are not allowed to deduct home office expenses.
If you drove to work by car instead of public transport in the period from March 16 to June 21, 2020, you can deduct the car costs up to a maximum amount of CHF 7,000. This is because the use of public transport is considered unreasonable due to the official measures and the reduced timetable. This rule also applies to other periods if the use of public transport was not reasonable in individual cases. The tax office can request confirmation from your employer that you were at your previous place of work during this time.
Basel applies a generous practice and grants the lump sum for professional expenses in accordance with previous principles. The lump sum for professional expenses is not reduced even if the professional expenses are actually lower due to non-performance of work during the lockdown (with continued payment of salary) or performance of work in the home office (e.g. omission of travel costs, additional meal costs). Further regulations can be found in the FAQ.
Like most cantons, the Bernese have opted for a pragmatic solution. You can claim professional expenses as if everything were unchanged (rules on meals away from home, flat-rate deduction for professional expenses, third-party childcare). This means that you cannot make a special deduction for working from home. However, you can claim travel expenses and meal costs for the time spent working from home. The following generous rules apply to the deduction of travel expenses.
Public transport costs: If you previously used public transport for work and bought an annual season ticket, you can deduct these costs even if you did not use the season ticket for the whole year. If you had car costs due to the unreasonableness of using public transport, you can deduct both public transport and car costs . If you waited to buy an annual travelcard and bought it later, you can deduct both single journeys to work and the annual travelcard.
Car costs: If you drove to work by car in the period from March 1 to December 31, 2020, you can deduct the car costs for each journey. Exceptionally, you do not have to provide proof that the journey by public transport was “unreasonable”. The deduction for travel expenses is still limited to CHF 3,000 for direct federal tax and CHF 6,700 for cantonal and municipal tax.
The costs for the home office are generally covered by the flat-rate deduction for other professional expenses. It is possible to claim the actual costs instead of the flat-rate deduction. Costs for working from home are deductible for the period in which the Federal Council has recommended working from home (17.3.-22.6.2020 and 19.10.2020-31.12.2020) or the employer requires its employees to work from home.
On home office days and days without work (e.g. short-time working), no costs for meals away from home may be deducted.
On home office days and days without work (e.g. short-time working), no costs are incurred for commuting to work, which is why no travel costs may be deducted for these days. If you have an annual public transport season ticket and have worked from home for a longer period of time, you can still claim the entire annual public transport season ticket as travel expenses because the costs were actually incurred.
Further details can be found in the FAQ.
The professional expense allowance is not reduced, even if the professional expenses have been reduced in the event of reduced work during the lockdown. This is why there are no additional deductions for working from home. Instead, the usual professional expenses (in particular commuting to work by bike and public transport as well as additional costs for meals away from home) that would have been incurred if you had worked at your usual place of work can still be declared in your 2020 tax return.
In the period from March 16 to June 21, 2020, you can deduct the car costs if you used it instead of public transport.
Zurich has also taken a pragmatic approach. In your 2020 tax return, you can claim your professional expenses (travel expenses, additional costs for meals, flat-rate deductions for other professional expenses and training and further education) as they would have been incurred without coronavirus. The professional expenses are also not reduced by the corona-related home office days. In return, this excludes a deduction for home office costs.
all other cantons
The tax administrations have agreed on a common broad line in the cantonal tax conference. In Swiss federalism, however, each canton has certain specialties. Find out whether your canton is one of the pragmatists and what applies in your canton of residence.
Summary
The tax authorities are quite pragmatic and generous when it comes to tax deductions in times of coronavirus, but their approach varies. In most cantons, you can claim deductions for professional expenses as you would in a normal year. The tax authorities treat working days at home as if you had been in the office. However, you are then not allowed to additionally deduct actual costs for home office, IT equipment, etc. It’s an either/or situation. You have to work out which is more advantageous for you in each individual case. This depends on the interplay of various factors, such as the duration and proportion of time spent working from home, the costs for your home office, the amount of your income and other actual costs).
In most cases, it is probably not only easier but also financially more advantageous to claim the usual professional expenses. By deducting 3% of your net salary (minimum CHF 2,000, maximum CHF 4,000 per year) instead of the actual costs for professional expenses, you will get off lightly despite the additional costs of working from home, because many expenses were never actually incurred due to coronavirus, but you can still deduct the costs with the lump sum.
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