3A staggered withdrawal calculation/table

O

OxygeN

Active member
Hi all.
Of course it's quite early to get deep into this topic (still got 20 years to go before retirement!), anyways I'd like to understand a bit more about it already in advance.
Now I got a bit less than CHF 50'000.- transferred to finpension into portfolio #1 - of course after just a few days the capital passed the 50k threshold. And this is a value I had in mind, being some sort of limit to keep in mind. Practically, I've been told and I've read about keeping not more than 50k on a 3A account, because the taxation has different percentages in 50k steps. I didn't find any evidence of this, thus this first question: is it true that taxation percentages change every 50k with regards to withdrawal of 3A accounts?
Second: if in the same year I withdraw a 3A account and a random amount from the second pillar, they would get summed for taxation purposes (thus potentially being past the 50k mark)?

I've asked my cantonal tax office how the taxation percentage would change in relation to the 3A withdrawals and they suggested I calculate it here.
I entered 50'000 (both "Bund" and "Kanton" - is this correct?) and with my situation (single, unmarried, no kids, no religion) it calculated CHF 1'640.45 total taxes (corresponding to 3,28%).
I then entered 100'000 and taxes went up to CHF 5'041.90 (corresponding to 5.04%).
With 80'000 the taxes are 4.45%... so this would actually prove that the taxation is progressive but not "in levels" (like stepping for each additional 50k).

Can anybody help me understand, if I'm getting it right?
Thanks!
 
OxygeN said:
is it true that taxation percentages change every 50k with regards to withdrawal of 3A accounts?
Click to expand...
Yes and no. Basically, each canton has its own calculation. For instance, in Fribourg, it's 1% for the first 50K and then 2% for the next 50K and again 3% for the next 50K, ...

So, you really have to look at the table for each canton. It's quite possible that Aargau does not have step-wise taxation.

OxygeN said:
if in the same year I withdraw a 3A account and a random amount from the second pillar, they would get summed for taxation purposes
Click to expand...
Correct.
 
Here I am back with more details - at least for Kanton Aargau:


So there's no "50k after 50k" tax rate - it's more granular. And also more difficult to calculate on my own (that's why I'd be using the tax calculator for AG:

www.ag.ch

Steuerberechnungen - Kanton Aargau

Der Steuerkalkulator hilft Ihnen beim Berechnen von mutmasslich anfallenden Steuern.
www.ag.ch www.ag.ch
 
Baptiste Wicht said:
Looking at the PDF, it seems to be only income tax, no?
Click to expand...
You're right. But if you go here you can use the calculator "Berechnung separate Jahressteuer zum Vorsorgetarif" which is for capital payments from 2nd and 3rd pillars. The guy at the tax office didn't tell me something else, thus I guess the information applies. But maybe I don't understand it yet?!
What indeed is confusing, is the fact that if I enter CHF 3'900.- both for confederation and canton, I still get a total amount of CHF 83.10 - shouldn't we expect it to be CHF 0.-?
 
I don't understand the calculator (maybe because of my German). Even this calculator mentions income, and they are two different incomes even though a withdrawal should be only one.

I am not sure you can expect it to be zero.
 
I've done the calculation with both the cantonal (AG) and the national calculators. There is a slight difference, therefore I think the cantonal calculator is as good as the national one (at least for Canton Aargau). I've set 51k to test with, here the results:

AG
1726818975743.png
Confederation
1726819005838.png
 
Thanks for sharing the details, it's good that the two calculators agree! The 4.10 CHF may be a simple rounding difference in the end.
 
Bad news in this context:

The expert report under the direction of Serge Gaillard proposes measures to relieve the state budget in the next years.

One of the measures was:
Elimination of tax benefits for capital withdrawals for the 2nd and the 3rd pillars. These sould be taxed for the same extent as pension payments. This can reduce the tax incentive to withdraw retirement capital for tax optimisation.

Link report: https://www.newsd.admin.ch/newsd/message/attachments/89486.pdf

It is the task of parliament to discuss these measures. Hopefully, they will cut the one mentionned above…

Have a good day,
Isa
 
Yes, I have seen that. Staggered withdrawals will still make sense in this case just to avoid increasing marginal tax rate too high.

But it it passes and capital withdrawals are taxed as income, this will be the end of the 2nd and 3rd pillar contributions. If they are taxed as income when withdrawn, I will stop contributing.

I really hope this will be fought back. I cannot believe that this will pass for the 3a, because it will destroy it.
 
Dammit! Switzerland become less friendly...
Is there a link to the report also in German, Italian and English? My French is way too bad to understand the linked PDF 😕

So basically, if that proposal will pass, it won't make sense anymore to pay into the 3A - better then to invest that ca. 7k yearly into ETFs, right?
But what about the 2nd pillar? I contributed voluntarily just once (last year), but I'm not going to do that anymore as I think this money is (again) better invested in ETFs.
 
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