What this is about
People posted to Switzerland for a few years often pay twice: the home abroad keeps running, and a second one is added here. Swiss tax law has a deduction built for exactly that — the special professional expenses of expatriates. How it works in general is set out in our guide to the deduction. This article is about the canton of Schwyz.
Who counts as an expatriate
Before the cantonal level matters at all, the basic condition has to be met. Art. 1 para. 1 ExpaV covers two groups: managers and specialists with particular professional qualifications who are posted to Switzerland temporarily by their foreign employer. Not everyone who comes to Switzerland on a fixed-term basis meets that test.
What "temporary" means is set out in Art. 1 para. 2 ExpaV: employment limited to a maximum of five years. And under Art. 1 para. 3 ExpaV the deduction falls away in any case where fixed-term employment is replaced by permanent employment — even if the five years have not been used up.
The legal basis in Schwyz
For cantonal and communal tax, Art. 28 para. 1 of the cantonal tax act applies — the provision on the other costs required to carry out your profession. The special professional expenses of expatriates are given shape by the federal Expatriates Ordinance, which applies directly to federal direct tax.
A separate publicly published Schwyz practice on the special professional expenses of expatriates — comparable to Zurich, Zug, Thurgau, St. Gallen or the two Basels — is currently not apparent. The cantonal basis is Art. 28 para. 1 lit. c of the cantonal tax act; for classifying the special professional expenses, the federal Expatriates Ordinance is the central reference. An overview of the cantonal rules on professional expenses is available in the canton sheet of the Federal Tax Administration.
How Schwyz handles the deduction
In practical terms: absent a published Schwyz practice in detail, how the canton handles a given case has to be checked individually — the starting point is the wording of the ordinance itself. Clarifications published by other cantons — on who counts as a manager, say, or on monetary reference values — cannot simply be transferred to Schwyz. They reflect the practice of the canton that issued them.
Example: leaving mid-year
An assignee leaves Switzerland at the end of July. Until then he rented in Schwyz at CHF 3,900 net plus CHF 250 utilities.
- Effective housing costs: CHF 3,900 × 7 months = CHF 27,300
- Flat rate: CHF 1,500 × 7 = CHF 10,500 for housing, relocation and travel together
- Return move: self-paid costs of moving back to the former country of residence are added under the effective option
When leaving mid-year, both the costs actually carried until the end of tax liability and their treatment for rate determination need to be assessed separately. In the year of departure in particular, it is worth comparing both options afresh.
What to watch for in Schwyz
In low-tax cantons the deduction often goes unclaimed altogether. Run the numbers before you skip it: it works on cantonal, communal and federal tax at the same time. And because no detailed cantonal practice is published, clarifying larger amounts with the tax administration in advance is worthwhile.
Regardless of canton, it is almost always the same points that cost people the deduction: gross rent claimed instead of net rent, the wrong provision cited, rate determination overlooked when arriving or leaving mid-year, or the home abroad left undocumented. The details are in our guide to the deduction, and what applies to travel and relocation costs is in the article on those.
Who carried the costs is decisive
What matters is who bears the costs economically and how any employer reimbursement is treated for tax purposes. An actual reimbursement against receipts generally rules out an additional deduction. Where a lump sum is paid and added to taxable gross salary in the salary statement, a deduction remains possible.
Every case is different — the potential usually is not
Whether and how much you can deduct depends on your situation: how the assignment is set up, your employment contract, your housing situation abroad, and who actually carried the costs. This article sets out the principles and a simplified example; it does not replace individual advice. What does generalise: on fixed-term assignments, deductions are regularly left on the table — a second look is almost always worth it.