The provisions governing the taxation of income from home offices will apply permanently from 1 January 2026.
We have reported on the details of the mutual agreement with France in various blogs published by us.
The mutual agreements on the double taxation treaty of the end of 2022 and June 2023 on teleworking will only apply until the end of 2025.
From 2026, the additional agreement will replace the mutual agreements. However, the mutual agreements on the cross-border commuters agreement with France (1983) will remain in force.
The supplementary agreement on teleworking corresponds, among other things, to the solution that has been in force since 1 January 2023. Income from teleworking can generally be taxed in Switzerland for employers in Switzerland and employees residing in France, as long as the upper limit of 40% of working time (per calendar year) spent on teleworking is not exceeded. For detailed provisions such as the definition of teleworking and the 40% upper limit, please refer to previous blogs.
The supplementary agreement was necessary to enable automatic exchange of information between Switzerland and France and to allow France to recover part of the tax on teleworking paid in Switzerland. This also applies in the reverse case, but is not relevant for Swiss employers.
For employers, this means that they now definitely need to get organised so that they have the necessary data ready at the beginning of 2027 for the 2026 calendar year. This data will be forwarded to the relevant canton, which will then send it to the FTA. The FTA will forward the data to France.
Even if this seems like little information at first glance, a lot of details are required for processing.
Here is a summary of the information required:
a) Surname(s) and first name(s) of the person, date of birth, postcode of place of residence and, if available, further information to facilitate identification (address, place of birth, marital status, tax number);
b) Calendar year in which the income was earned;
c) Number of teleworking days or teleworking percentage;
d) Total amount of gross remuneration paid.
It is envisaged that the cantons will be able to require this to be done electronically. The Swissdec ELM 5.3 wage standard was created for digitalised exchange. This allows the processed data to be transmitted. It would be desirable for the cantons to continue to base their procedures on this standard in order to avoid unnecessary administration due to different requirements among employers.
With a few exceptions in the public sector, the exchange of information includes all employees residing in France, in particular those to whom the cross-border agreement applies.
