Geneva's ISEL platform: what is changing in 2021

Jacques Kocher Leader Payroll Services West, PwC Switzerland 18 Aug 2020

As part of the revision of withholding tax, Geneva’s ISEL platform will be adapted from 1 January 2021, which will impact how small and medium-sized companies report tax at source. Larger employers will be advised to use alternative solutions.

The two main changes are as follows:

  • The obligation to submit withholding taxes in the employee's canton of residence (and no longer in the canton where they work, as is still permitted up until the end of 2020).
  • Deduction according to the employee’s situation at the start of the month (and no longer the employee’s situation over the year), which implies more frequent changes to the scales over the course of the year.

What’s more, the ISEL platform, with reduced functionality, will only continue to be available for small and medium-sized employers (up to about 50 members of staff liable to withholding tax) and will no longer allow data to be imported. It will only still be possible to input data manually and to transfer existing data (for example from the previous year).

For larger employers, especially those with a higher number of employees subject to withholding tax, the cantonal tax authorities recommend using Swissdec-certified salary management software ELM-QST 5.0. Since the certification for version 5.0 will probably not be ready by the start of 2021, the Geneva tax authorities have informed us that a transitional period is planned, during which transmissions using ELM version 4.0 will be accepted, as long as the salary management software has been adapted to calculate withholding tax in accordance with the new law.

As a result, if you have until now been using the file import function in ISEL and your salary management software is not Swissdec-certified, or if there are no plans to update your software to version 5.0, we recommend that you: 

  • Consider the opportunity of changing your salary management software for a Swissdec-certified version 4.0 software, which will become certified as version 5.0 during the course of 2021 (for example Abacus).
  • Or consider outsourcing your salary management.

If your company employs fewer than 50 members of staff liable to withholding tax, you will still be able to manually input the data relating to withholding tax for Geneva. However, there is no additional value in processing this way, as it presents a greater risk of error for the employer. We therefore advise you in this case to consider the possibility of automating the procedure using Swissdec, or of outsourcing your salary management. 

Calculation according to ELM 4.0 or 5.0 and transmission via Swissdec, possibly even this year, will allow you to produce your salary certificates with the information required under heading 15 «comments» as an alternative to the «attestation quittance». 

Contact us

Jacques Kocher

Jacques Kocher

Leader Payroll Services West, PwC Switzerland

Tel: +41 58 792 92 47