Switzerland Pension Lump-Sum Tax Calculator (Kapitalbezugssteuer)

About the Switzerland Pension Lump-Sum Tax Calculator (Kapitalbezugssteuer)

Pension capital you take as cash, a lump sum from your pension fund (pillar 2), your pillar 3a accounts or vested benefits, is taxed apart from your other income in Switzerland: the direct federal tax is one fifth of the ordinary tariff on the capital paid in the tax year, with no social deductions (Kapitalbezugssteuer). Because the tariff is progressive, spreading the withdrawals over several tax years can lower the tax.

This calculator works out the direct federal tax on one withdrawal and on the same capital spread over the tax years you choose, the pillar 3a accounts first and the pension fund lump sum in its own year, or in equal parts, and adds the cantonal and communal tax at your canton’s rates. Nothing you type leaves your browser. Without a pass the page shows a free preview of your own result: the tax on a withdrawal in one tax year, with the first rows of each table, while every other figure stays hidden until you unlock it with a Pro pass.

How pension capital is taxed

• Apart from other income: capital benefits from pension provision are taxed separately, with a full annual tax for the tax year in which they are paid, and no social deductions are granted (DBG art. 38).
• One fifth of the tariff: the federal tax is one fifth of what the ordinary tariff gives on that amount: the tax, not the capital, is divided by five. Single people use the tariff for single people; married couples, registered partners and single parents the one for married couples, without the reduction for children (ESTV tariff table).
• Couples: married couples and registered partners are taxed together on the income of both (DBG art. 9).
• Pillar 3a: taxed like pillar 2 capital (ESTV circular 18a).

Spreading the withdrawals

Pillar 3a pays out from 5 years before the AHV reference age to 5 years after it, earlier only for the reasons the law lists, such as buying your own home or starting a business (BSV). You can hold several 3a accounts, but each is paid out, and taxed, in full in the year you take it: a partial withdrawal realises the whole account, and an existing account cannot be split into new ones (ESTV circular 18a). So the usual way to spread is several accounts, taken in different tax years before the pension fund lump sum. Your pension fund’s rules decide whether and when you can take pillar 2 capital as a lump sum.

Cantonal and communal tax

Every canton taxes pension capital apart from other income too, but with its own method: at the rate a pension would carry, at a fraction of its ordinary tariff or with a special tariff. Enter your canton’s rates for the whole amount and for each part; the Federal Tax Administration’s tax calculator has them for every canton and commune.

Limitations

• For people who live in Switzerland: capital paid to someone living abroad is taxed at source with tariffs of its own.
• The chosen tax year’s tariff is used for every year of the plan, in today’s francs; the tariffs are adjusted for inflation each year.
• The cantonal and communal tax is what your own rates give.
• An estimate from the federal tariff and your rates, not tax advice: your tax assessment decides.

Privacy

On this device: nothing is sent

Everything happens in your browser. What you enter or open here is not uploaded or stored by MySmartCoPilot.