Swiss Pension Gap & Pillar 2 vs 3a Calculator, looking for feedback on the tax logic!

deimos1969

New member
Hi everyone,

Like many of you, I've spent an unreasonable amount of time trying to accurately project my future Swiss pension numbers and figure out how to bridge the gap for early retirement. While there are some great tools out there, I found it tedious to manually calculate exact capital withdrawal taxes across different cantons or project BVG growth alongside AHV.

To solve my own headache, I ended up building a dedicated native iOS app called Smart Pension App to handle this side-by-side. It currently includes two main tools:

  1. Pension Gap Calculator: Projects your AHV, Pillar 2 (using age-specific BVG contribution scales and coordination deductions), and Pillar 3a balances to find your exact annual income gap against your target retirement income.
  2. Pillar 2 vs. Pillar 3a Optimizer: Compares the net outcome of a Pillar 2 buy-in versus investing in Pillar 3a. It factors in your marginal tax rate for the upfront deduction, and then applies the specific cantonal capital withdrawal tax (currently modeled for ZH, SG, VD, and BE with municipal multipliers) to give a true net-net comparison over time.
You can find the app here if you'd like to test it out: https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/smartpensionapp/id6775884843

Since this community is unmatched when it comes to Swiss tax optimization and FIRE planning, I'd love your expert eyes on it to stress-test the math.

A few specific areas I'd love feedback on:

  • Pillar 3a depletion: In the Gap calculator, I'm currently using a 4% withdrawal rule to convert Pillar 3a lump sums into an "annual pension equivalent." Does this align with how you guys model your own 3a drawdowns for FIRE?
  • Withdrawal Taxes: Modeling the municipal multipliers (Steuerfuss) on top of the cantonal base can get tricky (especially for ZH's Rentensatz method). If you live in ZH, SG, VD, or BE, does the net tax output look accurate for your situation?
Thanks in advance for any feedback or edge cases I should add!
 
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