🇨🇭 Switzerland tax residency calculator
Enter your stays in Switzerland (and anywhere else — one ledger feeds every country) and the calculator applies the Swiss rule over the calendar year, shows the exact day count against 90 nights (cantonal), and tells you how many safe days remain.
Your travel ledger
Paste your travel list (one stay per line)
Format: YYYY-MM-DD ~ YYYY-MM-DD XX with the two-letter code of a
country on this site, or a single day YYYY-MM-DD XX.
How the Swiss rule works
Switzerland layers its residency rules. For federal direct tax, residency begins when you take up domestic residence (a home/abode) with the intention of staying — an intent-and-facts test, not a day count. The day-driven part is cantonal and communal: a stay of 90 days without gainful activity (or 30 days with gainful activity) in Switzerland triggers presumed tax residence at the cantonal level even without a formal abode.
Swiss practice counts the stay by nights spent in the country, which is why this calculator counts nights for Switzerland: a trip arriving 1 January and leaving 31 March is 89 nights. Days of arrival and departure collapse into nights the same way hotel bills do.
Cantons differ in practice and enforcement, and the interplay with the abode-based federal test means a low day count does not guarantee non-residence if your centre of life is in Switzerland. Cross-border commuters have their own rules.
- Steuerharmonisierungsgesetz (StHG), Art. 3, Residence by domestic abode with intention to stay; stays for tax purposes — official text
- Swiss Federal Tax Administration, Cantonal tax residency — length-of-stay rules (30/90 days) — official text
Every calculation above follows the cited publications. If a rule changes, the verification date above is updated — pages with stale dates are flagged for re-verification.
What this calculator does not decide
- Federal tax residency is abode-based (domestic abode + intention to stay) and can apply below the 90-night threshold; the calculator models only the cantonal day-driven presumption.
- The 30-day trigger with gainful activity in Switzerland is not modeled — working even part of your stay in Switzerland can change the outcome.
- Cantonal practice varies; the 90-night figure is the statutory frame, not a guarantee of uniform treatment across cantons.
- Cross-border commuter regimes and frontier-zone practice are not modeled.
- If another country also treats you as resident, the applicable double-tax treaty tie-breaker decides.
Switzerland residency FAQs
How many nights can I spend in Switzerland without becoming tax resident?
Up to 89 nights in a calendar year keeps you under the cantonal 90-night threshold if you are not working in Switzerland. If you carry out gainful activity there, the trigger can fall to 30 days — and an abode with intent to stay can create federal residency at any day count.
Why nights and not days?
Swiss practice measures stays by nights spent in the country, consistent with how the length of stay is evidenced (hotel bills, registrations). The calculator therefore counts every night of each stay.
I work remotely from Switzerland for my foreign employer. Does the 30-day rule apply?
The 30-day trigger concerns gainful activity carried out in Switzerland. Working from a Swiss location can count as gainful activity there even for a foreign employer — this is a fact question the calculator cannot resolve, so treat short stays with work cautiously.
Does Swiss residency matter if there is little income tax?
Yes — residency drives cantonal and communal tax on your income and wealth, social-insurance positions, and the treaty allocation between Switzerland and your other countries. Switzerland’s tax burden varies dramatically by canton and commune.