Owners usually get this wrong in one of two directions. Some assume there is no annual tax on property at all, because the Confederation levies none. Others assume a heavy property tax, because they have heard about the imputed rent. Both miss the sequence that matters for you: three more tax years under the old system (2026, 2027 and 2028), a new system from 1 January 2029, and a second-home tax that cantons are writing right now.
Three taxes land on the same house
1. The property tax in the narrow sense (Liegenschaftssteuer, impôt foncier). The Federal Tax Administration (ESTV) describes it as an object tax: it is triggered by the mere existence of the property and calculated on its gross tax value, without deducting the mortgage. The Confederation does not levy it, and the federal tax harmonisation law contains no rules on it. Whether you pay it depends entirely on the canton and the commune.
2. The wealth tax. Every canton taxes your net wealth, and your Swiss home is part of it at its cantonal tax value. Here the mortgage does count: debts are deducted, so the wealth tax falls on the equity, not the house. The property tax is levied in addition to the wealth tax, which already captures the property. How the wealth tax works by canton is on Swiss wealth tax.
3. Income tax on the imputed rental value (Eigenmietwert). If you live in a home you own, the tax office adds a notional rent to your taxable income, as if you had let the home to yourself. In return you deduct mortgage interest and maintenance. This is the part that disappears on 1 January 2029.
Most of the public debate is about the third tax. Most of the confusion comes from treating it as if it were the first.
Which cantons levy a property tax
The ESTV's canton-by-canton overview for the 2025 tax period splits the country roughly in half.
No property tax in Zurich, Lucerne, Uri, Schwyz, Obwalden, Nidwalden, Glarus, Zug, Solothurn, Basel-Landschaft, Schaffhausen, Appenzell Ausserrhoden and Aargau. Basel-Stadt levies its 2 per mille only on companies, so individuals pay none there either. One caveat: Obwalden and Nidwalden apply a minimum tax on real estate to individuals, and Uri applies a similar minimum tax to owners who pay less than CHF 300 a year in cantonal, communal and church tax. It is a different instrument, but it means "no property tax" is not always "nothing".
A property tax for individuals everywhere else, as a fixed rate in per mille of the property's tax value:
| Canton |
Who levies it on individuals |
Rate (2025) |
| Bern |
commune, optional |
up to 1.5 per mille |
| Fribourg |
commune, optional |
up to 3 per mille |
| Appenzell Innerrhoden |
district, school and church community, optional |
up to 1 per mille each, district and school community together up to 2 per mille |
| St. Gallen |
commune, mandatory |
0.2 to 0.8 per mille |
| Graubünden |
commune, optional |
up to 2 per mille |
| Thurgau |
canton |
0.5 per mille |
| Ticino |
commune, mandatory |
1 per mille |
| Vaud |
commune, optional |
up to 1.5 per mille |
| Valais |
commune, mandatory |
1 per mille, at least CHF 25 per owner |
| Neuchâtel |
canton (investment property only) |
2.4 per mille |
| Geneva |
canton |
1 per mille, 0.2 per mille on your main residence |
| Jura |
commune, mandatory |
0.5 to 1.8 per mille |
The arithmetic is direct, because the rate is not multiplied by a cantonal coefficient: the ESTV's own example is 0.5 per mille on a tax value of CHF 500,000, which gives CHF 250. A chalet with a tax value of CHF 1,000,000 in a Graubünden commune that charges the full 2 per mille costs CHF 2,000 a year.
Where the tax is optional (Bern, Fribourg, Graubünden, Vaud), the ESTV notes that communes rarely leave it unused. Before you sign for a property in those cantons, ask the commune's tax office for its current rate, not the cantonal maximum.
How the imputed rental value works until the end of 2028
The tax office sets a rental value for your home, taking local conditions and your actual use into account, and adds it to your taxable income. The Federal Supreme Court set the floor in 1998: the imputed rental value must be at least 60 percent of the market rent. Each canton then uses its own method, which is why assessments are worth checking and, where the value is too high, contesting within the appeal deadline on the assessment notice.
Against that notional income you currently deduct, at federal level, mortgage interest, maintenance costs, the cost of repairing a newly bought property, insurance premiums and third-party management costs.
A worked illustration with round numbers: the tax office sets the rental value at CHF 25,200 a year. You pay CHF 12,750 in interest on a CHF 850,000 mortgage at 1.5 percent and deduct CHF 7,500 of maintenance. CHF 4,950 of income that you never received is added to your salary and taxed at your marginal rate.
That mechanism explains a Swiss habit that surprises newcomers: owners keep large mortgages because the interest offsets the imputed rent. Paying the loan off removed the offset while the notional income stayed. From 2029 that logic largely reverses for a home you live in.
The vote and the date
On 28 September 2025 voters approved the federal decree on cantonal property taxes on second homes with 57.73 percent yes (1,579,379 yes, 1,156,598 no) and a majority of cantons (14 full and 5 half cantons in favour, 6 full and 1 half canton against), on a turnout of 49.53 percent. The federal law on the change of system, passed by Parliament on 20 December 2024, could only enter into force together with that decree, so the vote also decided the end of the imputed rent on first and second homes.
On 1 April 2026 the Federal Council set the date: the reform enters into force on 1 January 2029. It followed the majority of the cantonal finance directors, who wanted no earlier date, so that cantons can introduce a special second-home tax at the same moment the imputed rent disappears. The Federal Council called any later date unjustifiable.
For you this means: the 2026, 2027 and 2028 tax years are assessed under the old system. The imputed rent is still income, and the deductions still apply.
What changes on 1 January 2029
No imputed rental value on any home you use yourself, whether main residence or second home.
No maintenance deduction for self-used property, at federal, cantonal and communal level. For property you let or lease, the deduction for maintenance, repair of newly bought property, insurance premiums and third-party management stays.
Mortgage interest follows a quota. Private debt interest is deductible only in the proportion that your let Swiss real estate bears to your total assets. The fact sheet of the Federal Department of Finance works it through:
| Your assets |
Mortgage |
Interest at 2 % |
Deductible |
| Own home CHF 800,000, bank account CHF 200,000 |
CHF 500,000 |
CHF 10,000 |
CHF 0 |
| Self-used holiday flat CHF 300,000, bank account CHF 200,000 |
CHF 200,000 |
CHF 4,000 |
CHF 0 |
| Let flat CHF 800,000, bank account CHF 200,000 |
CHF 500,000 |
CHF 10,000 |
CHF 8,000 (80 %) |
It does not matter which property the loan is secured on. And read the federal wording closely if you hold property abroad: the numerator counts real estate located in Switzerland, so a let flat in Germany or Austria does not open the deduction for the direct federal tax.
A limited deduction for first-time buyers. If you buy a home in Switzerland for the first time and live in it permanently and exclusively, you can deduct the interest on that home in the first tax year after the purchase up to CHF 10,000 as a married couple or CHF 5,000 otherwise. The cap falls by 10 percent of the starting amount each year, so it runs out after ten years. The test in the law is your first such home in Switzerland; the wording does not refer to homes you owned abroad. Sell the home or change its use and the deduction ends from the following tax year, unless you buy a replacement home for the same use in Switzerland within a reasonable period.
The transition. If you first bought such a home on or after 1 January 2019, that is at most ten years before the reform, you keep the first-time deduction for the years that remain. On the wording of the law: bought in 2022, your first year was 2023, so 2029 is your seventh year and the married cap is CHF 4,000.
Energy and environmental deductions end for the direct federal tax. Cantons may keep them for their own taxes until the climate target is reached, at the latest until 2050. The deduction for work on listed buildings stays at federal level, and cantons may keep it too.
Lump-sum taxpayers keep a rental yardstick. For someone taxed on expenditure who runs their own household, one of the minimum bases remains seven times the annual rent or the rental value set by local conditions; the highest minimum applies. The imputed rent disappears as income, but a rental value survives for lump-sum taxation.
Second homes: the new cantonal tax
The constitutional amendment voters approved lets cantons depart from the general principles of taxation for property taxes on predominantly self-used second homes, provided the rental value of those homes is not taxed by the Confederation and the cantons. It is an option, not an obligation, and each canton decides.
Graubünden put numbers on it on 27 August 2026, when the government opened its consultation:
- the end of the imputed rent on second homes costs the canton an estimated CHF 40.5 million and the communes CHF 32.5 million a year;
- the canton proposes a special property tax on predominantly self-used second homes of 1.5 per mille of the wealth tax value;
- communes and churches may introduce their own special tax on the same basis and only have to set a rate;
- the cantonal constitution gets a new provision, which goes to a mandatory popular vote;
- the cantonal deductions for energy saving and for demolition ahead of a replacement building go; the deduction for listed buildings stays;
- the consultation runs until 27 November 2026, and the target date is 1 January 2029.
For a holiday flat with a tax value of CHF 1,000,000 that means CHF 1,500 a year from the canton alone, on top of any existing communal property tax (up to CHF 2,000 at the 2 per mille maximum) and before any communal or church special tax. It is a consultation draft, not law.
Bern moved first. On 13 November 2025 the government announced that it wants to allow communes to levy an additional property tax on predominantly self-used second homes. That needs a change to the cantonal constitution, with a mandatory popular vote, and each commune then has to adopt its own rules. No rate has been published.
Who gains and who pays more
The Federal Department of Finance estimates that at a mortgage rate of about 1.5 percent the reform costs the Confederation, cantons and communes around CHF 1.8 billion a year. From a mortgage rate of about 3 percent, it would bring in more than the old system. In a low-rate world it relieves owners; in a high-rate world it costs them.
- Little or no mortgage, typically retirees: you lose the notional income and had little interest to set against it. You gain.
- Large mortgage: you lose the interest deduction. The higher the rate, the more you lose.
- Older house with regular maintenance: you lose the maintenance deduction you used year after year.
- Self-used second home in a canton that introduces the special tax: the imputed rent goes, an annual charge on value arrives, payable whatever the mortgage.
- Lump-sum taxpayer who owns the home: the seven-times-rental-value minimum stays.
What to do before 2029, in this order
- Get the date of your first Swiss home purchase on paper. If it falls on or after 1 January 2019, you are inside the first-time buyer transition. Keep the purchase deed and the registration of residence; the deduction depends on permanent and exclusive own use.
- Plan maintenance with the calendar. On a self-used home, maintenance is deductible for the last time in the 2028 tax year. Work that is due anyway in the next three years is worth timing so the costs fall into 2028 or earlier. The saving is your marginal rate on the cost, so do not bring forward work you do not need.
- Review the mortgage before 2029, not after. For a home you live in, the tax reason to carry debt mostly ends with the 2028 tax year. The wealth-tax reason (debt still reduces net wealth) remains. Whether to amortise is a question of liquidity, wealth tax and returns, and of what your bank will refinance; see mortgages and the Swiss bank relationship.
- Second-home owners: follow your canton, not the federal headline. In Graubünden the consultation closes on 27 November 2026 and a cantonal vote follows; in Bern the constitutional vote comes first and the communes decide after it.
- Arriving from abroad and buying: settle the purchase rules first. Whether you may buy at all, and what else a purchase costs, is on buying property in Switzerland and Lex Koller.
If you own, or are about to buy, a Swiss home or holiday property and want the 2029 change and the second-home tax worked through on your own numbers, book a consultation on your Swiss move.
