Salary certificates and expenses regulations

Information and documents

The salary certificates is the key document in your payroll accounting in Switzerland and Liechtenstein. It serves as the basis for taxation of your employees. It is important you know and observe the differences between the two countries. In addition, legal requirements and complexity are increasing all the time.

For withholding tax payers, the salary certificates is also equivalent to a confirmation of the settled withholding taxes in Switzerland. As an employer, you must make these available to every person liable to withholding tax. So the challenges are manifold: you must prepare salary certificates in compliance with the rules, provide full transparency, and deliver wholly reliable information and figures on the salary certificates and the supplements to the salary certificates.

You can count on us. We support you in tax assessment, practical application questions and special cases concerning the salary certificates. Our common goal: the best solution. We are also happy to put our many years of experience to work for you, by optimizing your processes in salary administration and answering questions on social security, withholding taxes, employee shareholdings, permits, labour law, taxes and human resources.

Supplements to the salary certificates

If you issue employee shareholdings, you must complete a supplementary sheet to the salary certificates. This is also required by the guidelines for filling out the salary certificates. While how you present your information is not specified, the minimum content is regulated. With Version 5.0 of Swissdec’s ELM electronic payroll reporting procedure, you have to meet new requirements, specifically when you submit to ELM the supplements to the salary certificates together with the salary certificates.

Please note that additional information is required by some cantons (e.g. Vaud). Detailed explanations and examples can be found in Appendix III to Circular No. 37 «Taxation of employee shareholdings». The correct calculation internationally also warrants careful attention.

The taxation of employee shareholdings is one of our specialities. Here, we answer your questions about employee shares, employee options, restricted stock units (RSU), performance share units (PSU), phantom shares and employee share purchase programmes (ESPP). We are happy to support you with our comprehensive knowledge and useful tools. On request, we can prepare the supplements to the salary certificates in outsourcing. This means you can still process the wages yourself or have them processed by another partner.