What almost no French-language guide says: the exemption also covers derivatives. The Federal Tax Administration (the AFC, or ESTV in German) puts it in black and white in a document nobody cites — more on that below. A BTC futures contract follows exactly the same regime as spot BTC.
The trap is elsewhere. Switzerland doesn’t tax the gain, it taxes the holding: every 31 December, your portfolio becomes part of the base of a wealth tax with no federal tier — everything happens at cantonal and then municipal level, with a ratio of 1 to 13 between two cantonal capitals on the same wealth. On top of that comes a federal levy that articles overlook: the AVS contributions of non-working persons, also based on wealth. What follows covers the year 2026, up to date as of 3 September 2026; when no text settles a point, we say so instead of making things up.
The essentials at a glance
0% on private capital gains, spot and derivatives — and, symmetrically, no loss is deductible, not even a liquidation.
There is no federal wealth tax: a single national figure would be wrong. You need the canton and the municipality.
On CHF 500,000 of net wealth, the burden ranges from about CHF 187 in the city of Zug to CHF 2,551 in Lausanne.
Someone who lives off their portfolio without a job pays contributions to the AVS (old-age and survivors’ insurance), the AI (disability insurance) and the APG (loss-of-earnings allowances) on their wealth: from CHF 530 to 26,500 a year. A federal levy, hence identical everywhere — it flattens the gap between cantons.
The whole game is to stay in private wealth management without tipping into professional securities trading, where the gain becomes taxable income subject to social contributions.
The AFC’s safe-harbour criteria allow derivatives only for hedging, and leverage is the “most relevant indicator” of professional trading.
The income produced is taxable: mining, staking, lending, airdrops, salary paid in crypto, at the value on the day of receipt.
No federal inheritance and gift tax: the initiative that wanted to create one was rejected on 30 November 2025 by roughly 78% voting no.
Automatic exchange of information on crypto-assets doesn’t apply in 2026: 1st January 2027 at the earliest, partner countries not yet decided.
The AFC’s doctrine covers only facts submitted up to the end of December 2020: neither DeFi, nor NFTs, nor perpetuals were ever examined in it.
The principle: the gain is tax-free
It isn’t a favour, it’s by design: the federal legislator deliberately gave up taxing individuals’ capital gains, and Parliament reaffirmed it during the 1998 stabilisation programme: the attempt to write professional securities trading into the law failed, and it was decided to stick with the existing law. In exchange, the Confederation leaves the cantons an annual tax on the stock of wealth.
Direct consequence: selling isn’t a tax event. Neither a sale for francs, nor the swap of one token for another, nor the payment for goods in crypto. It’s a radical difference from France, where the tax deferral on exchanges merely postpones the tax until exit into euros, and from Belgium, which since 1st January 2026 taxes capital gains at 10% beyond an annual allowance. Luxembourg exempts too, but only after six months of holding: Switzerland, by contrast, attaches no holding-period condition to the principle.
“According to Federal Supreme Court case law, gains from forward transactions constitute — just like spot stock exchange transactions — capital gains and must be treated as such for tax purposes. So long as capital gains realised on private wealth are not expressly targeted by the law, such gains from forward transactions (futures) or option transactions therefore remain exempt from any tax […]. As a corollary, any corresponding losses in private assets cannot be deducted either.”
In practice: a CHF 200,000 gain on a BTC futures contract, realised by a private individual in Geneva managing their own wealth, isn’t taxable anywhere — and a CHF 200,000 loss on the same contract can’t be deducted from anything. Remember the second half: in Switzerland, a drawdown year gives you no relief whatsoever. No liquidation, rug pull, platform bankruptcy or lost key generates any deduction for private wealth. That’s the exact price of the exemption.
Wealth tax: no federal tier
Three levies hit the holder even if they never sell: the cantonal and municipal wealth tax, on 31 December and at market value (Art. 13, 14 and 17 of the Tax Harmonisation Act); income tax, for everything crypto produces; the social contributions of non-working persons. The first is the most misunderstood, since the Confederation levies no wealth tax: each canton has its own scale, whose basic tax is then multiplied by the sum of a cantonal multiplier and a municipal multiplier that changes from one municipality to another. The 2026 parameters of the six French-speaking cantons, plus Bern, Zurich, Ticino and Zug, are taken from the AFC’s cantonal fact sheets, as of February 2026; the annual multipliers come from the document “Tax rates and coefficients”, legislation as of 1st January 2026.
Canton
Wealth not taxed (single person)
Base scale
2026 coefficients (canton + capital)
Geneva
Social deduction of CHF 87,872
1.49 to 3.83‰, plus a supplementary tax
48.5% + 45.49% of additional centimes
Vaud
Allowance of CHF 60,000: beyond it, everything is taxed
0.24 to 3.39‰
155% + 78.5% (Lausanne)
Valais
Exempt amount of CHF 45,000
1.0 to 3.0‰, as an overall rate per class
No cantonal multiplier + 1.10 (Sion)
Fribourg
Social deduction of CHF 55,000, but decreasing from CHF 75,000 of wealth: nil for a sizeable portfolio
0.5 to 3.7‰, then 2.9‰ beyond 1.2 million
100% + 80% (city)
Neuchâtel
First tranche of CHF 50,000 at 0‰
3.0 to 5.0‰, then a flat 3.6‰ beyond CHF 500,000
124% + 65% (city)
Jura
Social deduction of CHF 28,500; taxation from CHF 58,000 of taxable wealth
Unit rate of 0.50 to 1.20 — unit not settled
2.85 + 1.90 (Delémont)
Bern
No tax below CHF 100,000 of rate-determining wealth
0.40 to 1.35‰, then 1.25‰
2.975 + 1.54 (city)
Zurich
First tranche of CHF 81,000 at 0‰
0.5 to 3.0‰
95% + 119% (city)
Ticino
Allowance of CHF 200,000: below it, no tax
1.0 to 3.0‰, last tranche at 2.5‰
100% + 93% (Bellinzona)
Zug
Exempt amount of CHF 204,000
0.425 to 1.70‰
78% + 52.11% (city)
Two honest caveats. For Jura, the bounds are reliable but not the unit of the rates: the legal text speaks of a “unit rate” without printing any symbol, whereas the cantonal sheet shows “%”. Reading it as a percentage would give an absurd burden, reading it as per mille makes sense, but no Jura source confirms it: we therefore publish no Jura amount. For Zug, the indexed amounts still carry the note “valid from tax period 2025” — a 2026 re-indexation can’t be ruled out.
The real gap, on the same wealth
Three complete calculations, for a single person holding CHF 500,000 of net wealth.
Municipality
Calculation detail
Annual tax
Burden
City of Zug
Base of CHF 296,000 after the exempt amount; basic tax of CHF 143.65 × 1.3011
CHF 187
0.37‰
City of Geneva
Base of CHF 412,128; basic tax CHF 824.18 × 1.9399 of additional centimes, plus a supplementary tax of CHF 39.50 which, unlike the basic tax, carries no additional centimes
CHF 1,638
3.28‰
Lausanne
Basic tax of CHF 1,092.70 × 2.335 (155% + 78.5%)
CHF 2,551
5.10‰
A ratio of 13.6 between Lausanne and Zug, on identical wealth, without a single sale. It’s the argument every article puts forward — and we’ll see below why it’s greatly exaggerated.
Don’t count on tax shields. In Geneva, in the canton of Vaud and in Ticino, the 60% cap assumes a minimum net return of 1% on your wealth, even if your portfolio doesn’t earn a cent. Worse in the canton of Vaud: after the shield, the cantonal and municipal tax can’t fall below 3‰ a year. Bern caps at 25% of the return, with a floor of 2.4‰. A shield is never an exemption.
What value to declare? The order is binding
The AFC working paper sets three rules, in this order: the tax value published in the ICTax rate list; failing that, the price on one of the main trading platforms; failing any price, the purchase price converted into francs.
The problem is arithmetic. We queried the public ICTax API on 3 September 2026: it lists exactly 90 tokens, in a universe frozen around 2022. MATIC, LUNC, BUSD and ETHW are still there; SUI, APT, TIA, ARB, OP, TON, SEI, INJ, PEPE, HYPE, ENA, JUP, stETH and wstETH are all absent, as are NFTs. For most of a 2026 portfolio, rule 1 therefore never applies: you fall back on rule 2 or even rule 3, and the burden of proof shifts onto you. A properly kept trading journal, with the prices used and their source, is worth more than three evenings of reconstruction.
One point we won’t settle: the official tax value of bitcoin on 31 December 2025 remains unknown, since the ICTax API returns only the symbols. Look it up yourself, and never reuse a figure you read on a blog.
AVS for non-working persons: the levy nobody mentions
Here is what’s missing from all French-language content, and it hits precisely the reader who has made it: the one who lives off their portfolio and no longer has a job. They aren’t outside the Swiss social system — they’re a person without gainful activity within the meaning of Article 10 of the AVS Act, and Article 28 of the ordinance calculates their contribution not on an income, but on their wealth.
Relevant wealth
Annual AVS contribution
Supplement per tranche of CHF 50,000
Less than CHF 350,000
CHF 435 (minimum contribution)
—
From CHF 350,000
CHF 522
CHF 87
From CHF 1,750,000
CHF 2,958
CHF 130.50
From CHF 8,950,000
CHF 21,750 (cap)
—
This scale covers AVS alone. On top of that come disability insurance, from CHF 70 to 3,500, and loss-of-earnings allowances, from CHF 25 to 1,250: a legal total of CHF 530 to 26,500 a year. Three clarifications: any pension received is multiplied by 20 and added to wealth; a married person contributes on half of the couple’s wealth; and the wealth used is that of your final cantonal assessment, so declaring your crypto automatically feeds into your AVS bill.
A small job doesn’t protect you. Article 28bis is explicit: someone who isn’t permanently in full-time gainful employment contributes as a non-working person when, over the year, the contributions deducted from their salary and those owed by their employer don’t reach half of the contribution calculated on wealth.
And that’s what demolishes the “Zug versus Lausanne” argument. AVS is federal, hence strictly identical in both cities. On CHF 500,000 of wealth, the AVS contribution alone is CHF 783 a year (CHF 522 at 350,000, plus three tranches of CHF 87) and the AVS, AI and APG total CHF 954, an amount the 2026 table of leaflet 2.03 gives directly, administrative costs extra. Add this CHF 954 on both sides: the Zug resident’s annual burden rises to CHF 1,141, the Lausanne resident’s to CHF 3,505. The famous ratio of 1 to 13 drops to 1 to 3. An honest article gives both figures.
The real Swiss issue: professional securities trading
The whole exemption rests on one classification: staying within “simple management of private wealth”. If the tax authority concludes there is an independent gainful activity, your gains fall under Article 18 of the Federal Act on Direct Federal Taxation: income taxed at ordinary rates, and subject to AVS contributions. The AFC applies to crypto-assets, by analogy, the five criteria of its circular No. 36 of 27 July 2012. If they’re all met, the text is categorical: the authorities conclude “in all cases” that it’s private wealth management.
The securities sold were held for at least six months.
The total volume of transactions — the sum of all purchases and all sales — doesn’t exceed, per calendar year, five times the amount of securities and assets at the start of the tax period.
Capital gains aren’t needed to replace missing income, which is normally the case when they represent less than 50% of the net income of the period.
Investments aren’t financed by borrowed funds, or the taxable investment income exceeds the proportional share of the interest expense.
The purchase and sale of derivatives, in particular options, are limited to hedging the taxpayer’s securities positions.
Two misreadings to avoid. It is not a vested right: if the five criteria aren’t met, “the existence of professional securities trading cannot be excluded” and the overall circumstances must be assessed — neither automatic reclassification nor protection. And no, a “secondary” indicator isn’t harmless: point 4.3.1 specifies that each of the indicators can, depending on circumstances, suffice on its own. Only two of them were relegated to the background by a 2009 Federal Supreme Court ruling, and for securities portfolios only: a systematic approach and specific professional knowledge. What the same passage deems decisive are the transaction volume and financing by borrowed funds.
Why a derivatives trader ticks both boxes
The circular expressly places derivatives among securities, at point 4.2: “derivatives, whose price depends on a given underlying value […] are also part of securities. Derivative financial instruments notably consist of options, futures and swaps.” They therefore come into play not only in criterion No. 5, but in the whole analysis: every opening and every closing counts in the volume of criterion No. 2. A CHF 100,000 portfolio that turns over sixty times in the year reaches CHF 6 million of volume, i.e. sixty times the start-of-period wealth instead of the five allowed — without ever having withdrawn a franc.
Criterion No. 5 completes the picture: the derivative is allowed only as a hedging instrument. Any directional use — the normal use of a perpetual in a trading strategy — falls outside that framework: the circular specifies that if the volume of derivatives is large relative to total wealth and if this use goes beyond protection against risks, “the use of derivatives must be classified as speculative”.
Finally, leverage. Trading on margin, using a Lombard loan or borrowing to buy crypto is financing by borrowed funds — which the circular calls the “most relevant indicator” of professional trading. Leverage on its own therefore ticks both indicators deemed decisive: it’s by far the fastest way to lose the exemption. A nuance we won’t settle: margin on a perpetual isn’t legally a bank loan, it’s a security deposit with the counterparty, and no published doctrine says whether an exchange’s internal leverage constitutes “financing by borrowed funds” within the meaning of criterion No. 4. We flag the point without asserting it in either direction.
What the switch costs — and what it gives back
Professional status is neither good nor bad in absolute terms: it costs tax and contributions on gains, it lets you recoup part of your losses. The two branches side by side:
Point
Private wealth management
Professional securities trading
Capital gain, spot and derivatives
Not taxable
Taxable income: federal + cantonal + municipal
Social contributions on the gain
None
Self-employed AVS, AI and APG, up to about 10% of net income
Losses
Never deductible
Deductible, if booked or documented
Loss carry-forward
Not applicable
Seven preceding financial years
Interest expense
Deductible up to the gross return on wealth + CHF 50,000
Fully deductible
Return to the other status
—
Taxable event on hidden reserves
The carry-forward row is the most underestimated: after a year of serial liquidations, professional status lets you carry the loss forward over seven financial years, whereas a private loss simply doesn’t exist for tax purposes. The last row is the exit trap: the transfer of business assets to private assets is “treated as a disposal”, so that becoming an ordinary private individual again after a professional year triggers tax on the latent capital gains.
On rates, direct federal tax caps at 11.5% — but as an average rate, not a marginal rate, which changes everything for middle incomes. Cantonal and municipal scales come on top: depending on domicile, the total marginal burden of a self-employed person roughly ranges from 22% to 45%. An order of magnitude, not a figure — only a municipality-by-municipality calculation makes sense. Note that two official sources diverge on the income at which this average rate is reached for a single person: Article 36, paragraph 1 of the Act, in its version in force on 1st January 2026, states CHF 794,000 for CHF 91,310 of tax, whereas an AFC document gives CHF 794,600. The law prevails: 91,310 divided by 794,000 is exactly 11.5%, which the document’s figure doesn’t give.
Perpetuals, funding, liquidations: the official silence
Let’s be precise about what nobody knows. The AFC document on derivative products devotes a taxation chapter only to forward transactions and options: swaps are defined only in its glossary, with no regime of their own, and the crypto working paper mentions neither derivatives, nor perpetuals, nor funding.
What we can say: a perpetual is economically a swap and legally a derivative within the meaning of circular 36, hence a security, and the regime of forward transactions should apply to it by analogy. What we can not say: that the funding rate received is certainly an exempt capital gain, or certainly taxable income from movable wealth. Both readings are defensible — as a periodic payment, it looks like a yield; folded into the position’s result, it looks like part of the gain — and no text settles it. Asserting one of the two would be the very error this article calls out.
The realistic route for a significant portfolio is a prior cantonal ruling, bearing in mind that it can be refused: the authorities give binding information only “in unequivocal cases”, and a book of perpetuals isn’t one. If you go through a prop firm, the question arises differently again, since the remuneration generally isn’t a market profit.
Transaction by transaction
Transaction
Taxable?
Regime and point to watch
Sale for francs
Not in private wealth
Exempt capital gain. Taxable if professional trading.
Crypto-to-crypto swap
No
A disposal like any other, hence exempt. But every swap counts towards the 5-times volume test.
Derivatives: futures, options, perpetuals
Not in private wealth
Same regime as spot. But they are securities, and directional use falls outside the safe harbour.
Salary received in crypto
Yes
Income from gainful activity, on the salary certificate, with social contributions.
Mining
Yes
Income at the value on the day. If it’s a self-employed activity, the mined tokens go into business assets.
Pool staking
Yes
Income from movable wealth, at the value on the day of realisation.
Direct validator staking
Yes, and riskier
The AFC asks you to check whether there is independent gainful activity.
Lending and DeFi yields
Yes
Income from movable wealth. Classification from cantonal practice, not from a federal text.
Airdrop
Yes
Taxable at market value at the time of allocation, even if you didn’t ask for it.
Liquidation, theft, rug pull, exchange bankruptcy
No deduction
The exact mirror image of the exemption on gains.
NFTs
It depends
No AFC text. Private wealth: resale exempt. Creation and royalties: taxable income.
Gift and inheritance
Depends on the canton
No federal tier. Spouse exempt everywhere; descendants exempt in most cantons.
Leaving Switzerland
No
No exit tax on individuals’ crypto-assets. The country of arrival may have one.
Income: the asymmetry that hurts
Pool staking is income from movable wealth, to be declared at the value on the day of realisation — i.e. receipt of the payment or acquisition of a firm entitlement, and not the unlocking date. For direct validator staking, the AFC asks you to check whether there is an independent gainful activity: that would trigger AVS contributions and could tip the holdings concerned into business assets. The same logic applies to yield farming and lending, with a caveat: this classification comes from cantonal practice, not from a federal text. No text covers restaking or liquid staking tokens.
And here is the brutality of the system: an airdrop is taxable “at market value […] at the time of allocation”. If the token then collapses, you’re still taxed on the value on the day of receipt, and the capital loss can’t be deducted from anything. The same mechanism applies to staking income cashed in at the market top. Document the date and the price.
Stamp duties and VAT: “zero on crypto” is false
It’s true for spot bitcoin — payment tokens aren’t taxable documents within the meaning of the Stamp Duty Act — and true for options and futures, unless settlement involves the delivery of taxable securities. It’s false for the most common wrapper in a Swiss bank: a listed ETP or crypto structured product is a debt instrument, hence a taxable security, whose purchase or sale by a Swiss securities dealer triggers the transfer stamp duty (the “droit de négociation”) — 1.5‰ for a Swiss security, half borne by each party, 3‰ for a foreign security.
The same caution applies to token categories: the AFC distinguishes three families — payment, investment, utility —, the second itself subdivided into three subtypes, and only payment tokens get the absolute zero. A debt token carries 35% withholding tax (the “impôt anticipé”) on its interest, a tokenised share bears withholding tax on its dividends and the issuance duty, and a contract-based investment token has its payments taxed in full as income from movable capital. Generalising the regime of payment tokens to tokenised RWAs is a mistake. Finally, on VAT: trading in derivatives is excluded from the scope of the VAT Act, but their custody and management are taxable at 8.1%: a custody fee carries VAT, unlike trading fees. For cryptocurrencies themselves, on the other hand, the exclusion rests on an administrative practice whose exact reference we couldn’t establish.
Declaring: the securities statement
There is no single federal form: the return is cantonal, with its own software. The schedule that concerns you is called the statement of securities and other capital investments — one line per cryptocurrency, the quantity held on 31 December, the price used, the equivalent value in francs, a wallet extract as a supporting document; income is declared separately. A structural difference from France: no specific form for declaring foreign accounts, hence no flat-rate fine per undeclared account. An account with a foreign platform or a self-hosted wallet is declared like any other asset, in the same securities statement: the obligation is just as real, it simply runs through the ordinary rules.
Expatriate taxed at source: on a B or L permit, as soon as you hold crypto you’re no longer exempt from filing a return. The Harmonisation Act provides for a mandatory subsequent ordinary assessment when “the wealth and income at their disposal are not subject to withholding tax at source” — a crypto portfolio is exactly that. You have until 31 March of the following year to request the form: it’s up to you to go and get it. Once triggered, the assessment applies until the end of your source-taxation liability and is not reversible, with the tax already withheld credited without interest. Doing nothing amounts to tax evasion. Some cantons waive it below a wealth threshold that isn’t published centrally: ask your cantonal administration.
On ordinary deadlines, we won’t invent anything: they’re set canton by canton, generally at the end of March with extensions on request, and the exact dates for the 2027 filing season haven’t been published. Cantonal form numbers also change every year: look them up on your canton’s website.
Death: the official inventory within two weeks
It’s the procedure most specific to crypto, and the most overlooked. An official inventory of the deceased’s wealth is drawn up within two weeks of death, and anyone who conceals estate assets whose existence they had to report faces a fine of CHF 10,000, raised to CHF 50,000 in serious cases or for a repeat offence — a sanction distinct from that for evasion. The typical case: an heir who knows the seed of a never-declared wallet. Two further points: the tax classification of the deceased’s securities survives death, so that inheriting a professional trader’s portfolio means inheriting a business portfolio in which every resale will be taxable; conversely, the heirs’ simplified back-tax procedure covers only the three periods preceding death, instead of ten.
On inheritance, the AFC documentation is clear: no federal tax, exclusively cantonal competence — consolidated by the rejection of the initiative on 30 November 2025. The surviving spouse or registered partner is exempt in all cantons, direct descendants in most, with exceptions: Vaud exempts the first million and then tapers to two million, Neuchâtel grants CHF 50,000, Appenzell Innerrhoden CHF 300,000. If you still see the Vaud allowance of CHF 251,000 quoted, it’s out of date. A Geneva peculiarity: the descendants’ exemption is lost if the deceased was taxed on a lump-sum (expenditure) basis in one of the last three final assessments. As for the allowances for siblings and third parties, the only source available dates from 1st January 2025 and at least one canton has changed its rules since: we don’t publish them as 2026 law.
Regularising: voluntary disclosure
If years of crypto were never declared, federal law provides a way out. On a first voluntary disclosure, criminal prosecution is waived on three cumulative conditions: that no tax authority knows of the evasion, that you cooperate without reservation, and that you endeavour to pay the back tax due. The back tax and interest remain due — only the fine disappears. And contrary to what you may read, subsequent disclosures aren’t without relief: the fine then falls to one fifth of the tax evaded. Without a disclosure, it generally equals the tax evaded, reducible to a third if the fault is slight and tripled if it’s serious.
Don’t be under any illusions about time limits: the right to initiate a back-tax procedure lapses ten years after the end of the period concerned, and the right to conduct it after fifteen years. One last warning, presented as such: a regularisation also seems to trigger retroactive AVS contributions, since the compensation fund is bound by cantonal tax data. The mechanism seems solid, but we haven’t re-checked it article by article and we don’t put figures on it.
2026: what changed, and what stayed the same
The essentials first: the crypto regime itself hasn’t changed. The AFC working paper still carries the date of 14 December 2021; circular No. 36 dates from 27 July 2012 and remains unchanged. The real problem is in the document’s introduction: it reflects practice only on the facts submitted to the AFC up to the end of December 2020. No DeFi element, no NFT, no restaking, no perpetual after 2020 has therefore ever been examined in it. When an online guide tells you what the Swiss regime is for Ordinals or for a restaking protocol, it extrapolates — at best.
What actually changed on 1st January 2026 is indexation: direct federal tax scale re-indexed for bracket creep, minimum base for lump-sum (expenditure-based) taxation raised to CHF 435,000 a year, new wealth scales in Zurich and Geneva.
As for the automatic exchange of information, many articles get it wrong. According to the official page of the State Secretariat for International Finance, updated on 18 May 2026: “the automatic exchange of information relating to crypto-assets can only be implemented by Switzerland from 1st January 2027 at the earliest”. The list of partner States is still the subject of ongoing parliamentary deliberations: the Federal Council proposed the European Union, the United Kingdom and most G20 countries, with the notable exception of the United States, China and Saudi Arabia, but nothing is settled. In practice, 2026 wealth and income declared in 2027 won’t be subject to any automatic crypto exchange — which is no reason to declare nothing, since back tax can be claimed for ten years.
What we won’t claim
An honest article also says where its knowledge ends. As of 3 September 2026, no official source allows us to settle: the unit of the Jura wealth tax scale, with a possible factor-of-10 error; the official tax value of bitcoin on 31 December 2025; the treatment of perpetuals, funding rates and forced liquidations; whether an exchange’s internal leverage constitutes financing by borrowed funds; the write-down of a claim on a bankrupt platform and the removal from taxable wealth of stolen or lost keys; the exact reference of the VAT practice applicable to cryptocurrencies themselves; which year the indexed Zug amounts apply to; the inheritance allowances for siblings and third parties in 2026; the cantonal form numbers and the deadlines of the 2027 filing season. Document your method, stick to it from one year to the next, and ask for a ruling rather than copying a forum or an artificial intelligence.
To see how Switzerland compares with the other French-speaking jurisdictions, the five regimes are set side by side in the series comparison — with a result that depends far less on the displayed rate than on your real profile.
Run the numbers with the simulator
The simulator calculates the wealth tax of nine cantons and adds the AVS contribution of non-working persons — the two items that your exempt capital gain doesn’t make disappear. It shows the rule applied on each line, and stops at the cases that no text settles rather than inventing an amount. Everything is calculated in your browser: nothing is transmitted or stored.
Frequently asked questions
Does Switzerland really tax crypto capital gains at 0%?
Yes, for an individual in private wealth management, and this applies to spot as well as to futures and options. The flip side is absolute: no loss is deductible. And Switzerland taxes holding every year, via the cantonal and municipal wealth tax.
How much wealth tax will I pay on my crypto?
Impossible to say without your canton and your municipality, since there is no federal wealth tax. On CHF 500,000 net, the burden ranges from about CHF 187 in the city of Zug to CHF 2,551 in Lausanne, via CHF 1,638 in the city of Geneva. A simulator that gives a single figure is wrong.
I live off my portfolio without a job: so I pay nothing?
Quite the opposite. You’re a person without gainful activity and you contribute to AVS, AI and APG on your wealth: from CHF 530 to 26,500 a year, a federal levy identical in all cantons. And a small job doesn’t protect you if the contributions on your salary don’t reach half of the contribution calculated on your wealth.
Are my gains on perpetual contracts exempt?
The AFC writes that gains on forward transactions and options are exempt capital gains in private wealth, and a perpetual is a derivative within the meaning of circular 36: the regime is meant to apply to it by analogy. But no published doctrine addresses perpetuals, funding or liquidations, and directional use takes you out of the safe harbour. For a significant amount, ask for a cantonal ruling.
What tips me into professional trader status?
Five cumulative criteria shelter you: a minimum holding period of six months, an annual transaction volume below five times your start-of-period wealth, gains under half of your net income, no financing by borrowed funds, and derivatives used only for hedging. Volume and leverage are the two indicators the Federal Supreme Court deems decisive.
Can I deduct my losses after a catastrophic year?
In private wealth, no: neither liquidation on perpetuals, nor rug pull, nor stolen keys, nor platform bankruptcy. It’s the exact mirror image of the exemption on gains. Only a professional trader deducts their losses, with carry-forward over seven financial years — but they also pay tax and contributions on their gains.
How do I declare a token absent from the official list?
The order is binding: ICTax list first, then the price on one of the main trading platforms, then the purchase price converted into francs. As ICTax lists only 90 tokens frozen around 2022, it’s almost always the second or third rule that applies: keep your price screenshots and your supporting documents.
Is Switzerland already exchanging my crypto data with other countries?
No. Automatic exchange of information on crypto-assets can only be implemented by Switzerland from 1st January 2027 at the earliest, and the list of partner States isn’t settled. Beware though: the right to initiate a back-tax procedure lapses ten years after the period concerned, and the right to conduct it after fifteen years.
Disclaimer
This content is informational and up to date as of 3 September 2026. It isn’t personalised tax advice: we aren’t tax advisers, and everyone’s situation differs according to their canton and municipality of domicile, their status with regard to AVS, the nature of their transactions and the history of their portfolio. Cantonal scales and the cited texts may be amended. Before any decision involving significant amounts, consult a tax expert or ask your cantonal administration for a ruling.
