# Household payroll tax study 2026: methodology and sources

Published by Helpore. Study author: Gilberto de la Fuente, Director at Helpore.

## Fixed study model

The main comparison models a single, childless resident B permit worker with no church tax, except that Jura uses its published combined A0Y tariff. The worker has one to five genuine, unrelated household employers during the whole of 2026. Each scenario uses twelve equal monthly payments and divides the same total pay and contracted hours equally among the jobs.

Six total monthly wage levels and five household counts produce 30 scenarios. Each scenario is evaluated in all 26 cantons, giving 780 canton results. Every canton has equal weight in national summary statistics. The published routes are all ordinary payroll, all eligible simplified payroll, and one ordinary job with all remaining eligible jobs using the simplified procedure. In the national withholding comparison, routes with two or more ordinary jobs and at least one simplified job are not calculated because their rate basis is outside the verified scope of that comparison.

The source tax figures are current payroll deductions. They are not final assessed income tax, net pay, household cost or a population estimate. The selected Zurich, Bern and Zug final tax examples and the fixed occupational pension and accident comparison do not enter the source tax ranking.

## Final income tax in all 26 cantonal capitals

This separate extension compares final assessed income tax, not payroll withholding. It models one single Swiss citizen or C permit holder, age 45, living alone throughout 2026, with no children, church affiliation, wealth, other income, pillar 3a contribution, voluntary occupational pension contribution or rent deduction. Eligible private insurance premiums are assumed to reach each applicable local deduction cap. The results describe fixed capital city models. They are not a population weighted Swiss average, every municipality or an individual tax calculation.

The 26 official calculator location IDs are: AG Aarau 500000000; AI Appenzell 905000000; AR Herisau 910000000; BE Bern 300100000; BL Liestal 441000000; BS Basel 400100000; FR Fribourg 170000000; GE Genève 120100000; GL Glarus 875000000; GR Chur 700000000; JU Delémont 280000000; LU Luzern 600000000; NE Neuchâtel 200000000; NW Stans 637000000; OW Sarnen 606000000; SG St. Gallen 900000000; SH Schaffhausen 820000000; SO Solothurn 450000000; SZ Schwyz 643000000; TG Frauenfeld 850000000; TI Bellinzona 650000000; UR Altdorf UR 646000000; VD Lausanne 100300000; VS Sion 195000000; ZG Zug 630000000; ZH Zürich 800100000. Herisau is used as the administrative seat convention for Appenzell Ausserrhoden.

The matrix covers CHF 21’600, CHF 43’200 and CHF 54’000 annual gross wages split equally across two to five genuine unrelated household employers. Every eligible count of ordinary and simplified jobs is enumerated, including both uniform routes. Each employer employs only this worker in the model and has no other payroll. The annual simplified procedure limits are CHF 22’680 per worker and CHF 60’480 per employer. The 26 CHF 54’000 cases with two employers are excluded from the comparable model because each job crosses the assumed compulsory occupational pension entry threshold. Exclusion is recorded, never treated as zero.

Employee social contributions and the nonoccupational accident threshold are calculated per employer before the ordinary share is aggregated. Simplified wages remain outside ordinary taxable income and its rate calculation. Their final tax of 5% of gross wage is added separately. Personal deductions apply once per person. Simplified jobs still carry social and accident contributions, so the income tax table is not a net pay or employment rights comparison.

The main protocol is `model40`. Verified canton specific part time and full year rules for Ticino, Uri, Glarus, Solothurn, Lucerne and Zug are applied first. Where a cantonal rule gives no part time formula, fixed amounts, minima and maxima are scaled once by ordinary weekly hours divided by 40, while percentage deductions use actual ordinary net income. The `full` protocol retains the official calculator professional cost defaults as a diagnostic sensitivity. The `percentageOnly` protocol removes the minimum from compatible 3% of net income rules while retaining the maximum. Neither sensitivity is a promised deduction or an assessment bound. Baseline payroll contributions are rounded per employer to whole francs. Aggregate rounding is retained as a second convention.

The compact data contains 1,326 baseline arrangement rows and 286 scenario groups. The complete archive contains all 7,956 protocol and rounding cases, 2,080 referenced official requests and responses, official deduction exports, 26 exclusions and the retained 14 response insurance sensitivity. In the CHF 43’200 two job cap profile, mixed payroll is lower than both uniform routes in 24 capital models. Geneva and Zug favour ordinary payroll. With CHF 4’560 of eligible premiums in the Geneva sensitivity, mixed payroll becomes lower. Across other pay and employer count cases the lowest tested arrangement changes. No pooled sensitivity average or universal lowest route is claimed.

The corrected legacy three city file remains downloadable for historical continuity. Its Bern low income social deduction uses completed CHF 2’000 bands. All 30 affected detailed Bern cells and seven selected summaries are corrected. Zurich and Zug legacy records are unchanged. The national capital file supersedes that selected city artifact for current comparisons.

## Primary sources

- Federal Tax Administration, official 2026 source tax tariff archive: https://www.estv2.admin.ch/qst/2026/loehne/tar2026txt.zip
- Federal Tax Administration, Circular 45, sections 6.4 and 7.3.2: https://www.estv.admin.ch/dam/de/sd-web/I3YyTvU3ThVA/dbst-ks-2019-1-045-d-de.pdf
- AHV and IV, simplified procedure leaflet 2.07: https://www.ahv-iv.ch/p/2.07.d
- SECO, simplified procedure for low payroll totals: https://www.seco.admin.ch/de/vereinfachtes-abrechnungsverfahren-bei-tiefen-lohnsummen
- Federal Social Insurance Office, occupational pension guidance: https://www.bsv.admin.ch/de/altersvorsorge-beruflichen-vorsorge
- Federal Office of Public Health, accident insurance guidance: https://www.bag.admin.ch/de/was-bietet-die-unfallversicherung
- Federal Office of Topography swisstopo, swissBOUNDARIES3D: https://www.swisstopo.admin.ch/en/landscape-model-swissboundaries3d
- Interpellation 26.4082, filed 14 September 2026: https://ws-old.parlament.ch/affairs/20264082?lang=de
- Federal Statistical Office employment data: https://dam-api.bfs.admin.ch/hub/api/dam/assets/36768397/master
- Federal Tax Administration, official tax calculator: https://swisstaxcalculator.estv.admin.ch/
- Federal Tax Administration, official cantonal tax sheets: https://www.estv.admin.ch/de/kantonsblaetter
- Canton Zug tax law, current section 33: https://bgs.zg.ch/app/de/texts_of_law/632.1
- Canton Zug, official 2026 social deductions: https://zg.ch/dam/jcr:736ef31a-f3e3-48f3-ad5d-9870761a47c1/Sozialabz%C3%BCge%20ab%202001-2026.pdf

An earlier analysis of one job supplied the initial question. Helpore extended it to multiple independent household employers, supported payroll arrangements, six pay levels, all 26 cantons and separate pension and accident examples.

## Published files

`household-count-data.json` and `household-count-data.csv` contain the 780 extended canton results. `cross-employer-data.json` contains the fixed two job finding. `helpore-tax-data.json` and `helpore-household-payroll-2026.csv` contain the focused three household dataset. `final-tax-examples.json` preserves the original Zurich examples. `final-tax-extension.json` is the corrected legacy three city artifact and identifies itself as superseded. `final-tax-26-capitals.json` is the compact national capital city dataset. `final-tax-26-capitals-evidence.zip` contains the complete referenced evidence as `full-evidence.json`. The two GeoJSON files reproduce the official map geometry, with the display file simplified for the interactive map.

Money fields in JSON are integer Swiss franc cents. The manifest records the SHA-256 digest of every published file.