Days abroad

If a Income tax payer is delegated abroad for one or more days (e.g. for a trade fair or further training or a visit to a customer on site), the number of these days is to be reduced proportionately in the wage subject to Income. The idea is that employees only have to pay Income tax for the days they actually worked in Switzerland.

The provision states that days of travel also count as days abroad if at least half of the day was commute time. Other details are not defined. If you have any questions about the qualification of activities as days abroad, please contact your tax administration for final clarification.

A new salary type must be created to automatically settle this in the system (employer salary type). The salary type should not have any obligations for social security or taxes. Enter the transitory wage account as an account and an offset account.

Enter the salary type number in the ‘IT actual days abroad ST’ field in the ‘Income’ tab of the Payroll Setup. The fixed value of 20 (days) must be stored directly below in the ‘Tax at Source Working days CH’ field. Therefore, each month is billed with a maximum of 20 workdays. 20 working days per month apply to all cantons.

We recommend recording individual workdays abroad positively in the Payroll Journal with the document date so that you can see more easily what these days are based on. You must be able to disclose these days to the tax administration. If you record the days in another tool, for example in a time recording solution or in a work report, then you only can record in SwissSalary the total days abroad.

If the gross wage in a month amounts to CHF 10'000 and in the corresponding month the person has worked for 5 days abroad and for 15 days in Switzerland respectively, the days of wage subject to withholding should be reduced from 20 to 15.

IT wage = 5'000 ÷ 20 × 15 = CHF 3'750.00

IT Rate Determination (unchanged!) = CHF 5'000.00

Special regulations apply to the 13th Payday, 14th Payday and aperiodic salary types. They are not reduced based on the days abroad in the current accounting month, they are rather based on the days abroad billed in the calendar year. No special setup is required for this and Swissdec requirements are implemented.

NOTE

Days abroad cannot be taken into account retroactively. They are always taken into account for the currently billed period.