Australian Expats in Switzerland: Borrowing Back Home When You File No Swiss Tax Return
Switzerland pays Australians well and taxes them quietly. The tax comes out of your salary before you see it, and in most cases you never file a Swiss tax return at all. That is pleasant until an Australian lender asks for your last two years of tax returns, because for you they do not exist. This page is about evidencing a Swiss income without the document the lender expects, and about the second pillar sitting in your pension fund, which for an Australian going home behaves very differently than it does for a colleague moving to Germany.
Can you borrow in Australia from Switzerland?
Yes. Australian citizens and permanent residents living in Switzerland can buy and refinance Australian residential property, and Swiss franc income is accepted by a number of Australian lenders. Eligibility is rarely the obstacle. The two things that actually shape your file are documentary, not financial: how you prove an income that produces no Swiss tax return, and how you treat the occupational pension if you are coming home.
Swiss packages tend to be clean, contractual and well documented on the Swiss side. The friction sits at the border between two systems that expect different paperwork. Solve that early and these are among the more straightforward expat files we run.
The document your lender asks for, and does not exist
Switzerland taxes most foreign workers at source. Your employer deducts federal, cantonal and communal income tax from your salary every month and pays it to the cantonal authority, and the official position is blunt about the consequence: you do not need to fill out a tax return. So the two years of tax returns an Australian lender routinely asks for, as its proof of income, is a document you have never produced.
The Confederation’s own guidance sets it out plainly. Tax at source “is deducted directly from your salary” and “mainly concerns foreign residents who do not hold a C permit”. It applies to “all foreign workers resident in Switzerland”, with the exception of those holding a settlement permit, or married to a Swiss national or to a settlement permit holder. Your employer, or your insurance or pension fund, “deducts the tax at source from your salary (or benefits) every month and sends the money to the cantonal tax authorities”, and that deduction “covers your federal, cantonal and communal income taxes. This means that you do not need to fill out a tax return.”
One consequence worth stating because people assume otherwise: there is no single Swiss rate to quote you. The rate of tax deducted at source varies from canton to canton, so what your colleague in Zug pays and what you pay in Geneva are different numbers, and both are questions for your cantonal tax authority rather than for a mortgage broker.
A broker who has not run a Swiss file before will request tax returns, you will explain that you do not have any, and the conversation restarts. That round trip costs weeks. Say it in the first conversation: taxed at source, no Swiss return, here is what I have instead.
How to evidence a Swiss salary without a Swiss return
The gap is filled with what the Swiss system does produce, which is generally more consistent than what a tax return would have shown.
- Monthly payslips, ideally twelve of them. Swiss payslips itemise the deduction at source clearly, which is exactly what an assessor needs in order to reconcile gross and net.
- The annual salary certificate your employer issues, the Lohnausweis. It is the closest thing you have to a year end statement of income and it is the single most useful document in the file.
- The employment contract, which separates base salary from any bonus, allowance or thirteenth month. Contractual and recurring components are read more generously than a single undifferentiated figure.
- Bank statements showing the salary landing, which lets an assessor tie the paperwork to the account.
Assembled that way the file is often stronger than a comparable Australian one, because the income is documented monthly rather than reconstructed annually. It just needs to be assembled before anyone starts talking about pre-approval.
Which permit you hold, and why it decides the tax question
Australians are third-state nationals in Swiss terms, which means the State Secretariat for Migration issues you an L, B or C permit in the ordinary case, with Ci covering the working spouses and children of some international organisations and G covering cross-border commuters.
For our purposes only one distinction matters. The C permit is the settlement permit, and it is the one that takes you out of taxation at source and into the standard procedure, where you do file a return. If you hold an L or a B, expect the no-return situation described above. If you hold a C, you may well have Swiss returns to hand, which makes the income evidence conversation shorter.
We do not publish permit durations or renewal rules here, because those are migration questions rather than lending ones and they change. What your lender wants to know is which letter you hold and how long your right to remain runs, so have the permit itself available rather than describing it from memory.
Your second pillar, and why Australia is the lucky destination
If you leave Switzerland permanently, the occupational pension in your second pillar can often be taken in cash, and whether it can turns on where you are going. Cash payment is restricted for people moving to an EU or EFTA country. Australia is neither, so for an Australian going home the restriction generally does not bite, and the pension can become a deposit.
The rule is set by the LOB Guarantee Fund, the Swiss liaison office for occupational benefits. Cash payment is blocked only where four things are all true at once: the departure takes place after 31 May 2007, the balance is from the statutory minimum benefits, the person moves to an EU or EFTA country, and that person must have compulsory state insurance for retirement, disability and survivors’ benefits in the new country. The Fund is explicit about what happens otherwise: “If any one of the above points is not satisfied, the entire credit balance can still be drawn in cash on departure abroad.”
An Australian returning to Australia fails the third condition, because Australia is outside the EU and EFTA. The Fund states the practical effect directly: “In the event of departure to a country outside the EU or the EFTA, no clarification of the insurance situation by the Guarantee Fund is needed.”
Contrast that with a colleague moving to Germany or France. For them the mandatory portion stays behind in a blocked vested benefits account or policy, released only at ordinary retirement age or no earlier than five years before it. Two people leaving the same Zurich employer in the same month can be in entirely different positions, decided by the destination on the removal van.
Before you touch the pension
This is the part where a page like this should slow down rather than speed you up. A cash withdrawal of the second pillar is a taxable event in Switzerland, and it has consequences in Australia that depend on your residency at the time and on how the money is treated when it arrives. Those two systems do not decide in the same way and they do not decide at the same time.
We arrange mortgages. We are not tax agents, and this is precisely the boundary where that matters. We can tell you what a lender does with the money once it is sitting in an Australian account as a deposit. We cannot tell you what either revenue authority will do with the withdrawal, and you should put that question to a tax adviser who works across both countries before you instruct anyone to release anything. Getting the order wrong here is expensive in a way a rate never is.
Find out what your franc salary borrows. Checked by a former banker, free.
Tell us which canton you are in, which permit you hold and how your package is structured, and we will tell you which lenders take francs, how much of your income each counts, and what to send instead of a tax return.
Find out what your franc salary borrowsRather message from Switzerland than book? WhatsApp Ahmed about your franc salary and what to send instead of a tax return. His own mobile, no call centre, and the first chat is free.
How an Australian lender reads a franc salary
Australian lenders that accept foreign income discount it, convert it at their own rate rather than the market rate, and want it evidenced in a form they recognise. The Swiss franc is a heavily traded major currency, which is a better starting position than a thin or restricted one, but acceptance and the size of the discount still differ from lender to lender, and that difference is usually worth more to your borrowing capacity than anything you can change about the application.
Deposit and LVR on a franc salary. The franc is on Macquarie’s list of nine accepted currencies but not on the list one major bank publishes for its broker channel, where an unlisted currency is taken case by case with at least 30 per cent deducted from the gross salary and the 95 per cent tier, reserved for an Australian citizen paid in Australian dollars or one of seven listed currencies, does not apply. A 20 per cent deposit plus costs is the planning number from Zurich, Basel or Geneva, and a permanent resident living overseas stops at 80 per cent whatever the currency.
We do not publish which lenders accept francs or what discount each applies, because those settings change without notice and a stale figure is worse than none. On a call we will tell you which lenders on our panel currently take your currency and how much of your income each counts. At least one major bank owned lender treats some foreign currencies more favourably than the standard approach, and whether that helps depends on the currency you are paid in.
Two things hold across lenders. Documents in German, French or Italian generally need translation. And a package that separates base, bonus and allowances is read more generously than one lump figure, because the assessor can see which parts are contractual.
Zurich, Basel and Geneva
Swiss lending rules do not change between cantons for our purposes, but the shape of the package does, and the package is what the file turns on.
- Zurich holds the largest concentration of Australians in banking, insurance and asset management. Bonus is often a large share of total pay, and variable income generally needs a two year history before a lender counts much of it.
- Basel is pharmaceuticals and chemicals, where packages more often include structured allowances and long term incentive components. Get the contract in front of the broker, not just the payslip.
- Geneva runs on international organisations, NGOs and commodities trading. Some employment there carries privileges and immunities that change the tax position entirely, so this is one case where the standard tax at source description may simply not apply to you. Say so early.
FIRB, if you are a citizen or permanent resident
Australian citizens do not need foreign investment approval to buy residential property in Australia, and living in Switzerland does not change that. Australian permanent residents are generally exempt too. If you are neither, different rules apply and approval may be required before you buy.
Check your own position against the current rules at foreigninvestment.gov.au rather than against any summary, including this one, because the settings for non residents have moved more than once in recent years.
Buying while you are still in Switzerland
You do not need to fly home. Inspections can be handled by a buyer’s agent, contracts are reviewed by an Australian conveyancer, and signing is electronic in most states.
Identity documents usually need certifying. The Australian post covering Switzerland and Liechtenstein operates from Bern and Geneva and runs a notarial service for certifying documents, affidavits and apostilles; current locations, availability and fees are on its notarial services page. Check there rather than relying on what a forum said last year, and book early, because a certification appointment is the small step that quietly moves a settlement date.
The time difference is the one genuine inconvenience. Switzerland sits eight to ten hours behind Australian eastern time depending on the season, so the overlap with an Australian lender’s business hours falls in your very early morning. Plan for decisions to take a day longer than they would at home and front load the paperwork accordingly.
Refinancing a loan you already have
If you owned in Australia before you moved, the loan may have quietly become expensive. Lenders reprice existing borrowers far less aggressively than new ones, and a loan arranged while you were a domestic salary earner may no longer suit a file that now reads as foreign income.
Refinancing from overseas is ordinary, documented work, and the currency and evidence questions above apply exactly as they do to a purchase. The step by step is in our guide to refinancing an Australian mortgage while you live abroad, and expat home loans by country sets out what shifts with the country you are in.
The people behind Everstone
You are trusting someone with one of the biggest financial decisions you will make, from another time zone. Here is who you will actually be working with.
Ahmed Lotfi
A former major bank lender who now works entirely for you. Ahmed runs the expat files personally: currency, structure, lender selection and the negotiation with the credit desk. English, Arabic and French.
Zappelin Heng
Co-founder with deep lender experience, focused on getting complex and self-employed files assessed on their real strength, not a tick-box, including expats running businesses at home or abroad.
Buying a home in Australia from Switzerland: evidence the salary, then run the steps
Buying a home in Australia from Switzerland is an evidence exercise first. The franc is accepted, but the annual tax return a lender expects often does not exist, so the file is built from twelve months of payslips, the annual salary certificate, the employment contract separating base from bonus, and statements showing the salary arriving. Certification runs through the Australian post in Bern and Geneva by appointment. The clock, eight to ten hours behind eastern Australia, means the overlap falls in your early morning, so front load the paperwork. Contract review, electronic signing and PEXA settlement run from Switzerland.
Whether the search is buying a home in Australia from Switzerland, buying a house in Australia from Switzerland, buying property in Australia from Zurich or can I buy a house in Australia from Switzerland, a citizen or permanent resident can from Zurich, Basel or Geneva, and the occupational pension question belongs before the purchase if a move home is in the plan.
Frequently asked questions
Can an Australian living in Switzerland get an Australian home loan?
Yes. Australian citizens and permanent residents in Switzerland can buy and refinance Australian residential property, and several Australian lenders accept Swiss franc income. Each lender discounts foreign income and converts at its own rate, so borrowing capacity varies more between lenders than between applicants. The practical hurdle is documentary: most Australians in Switzerland are taxed at source and file no Swiss tax return.
Why do I not have a Swiss tax return to give my lender?
Switzerland taxes most foreign workers at source. Your employer deducts federal, cantonal and communal income tax from your salary each month and pays it to the cantonal authority, and the official guidance states that this means you do not need to fill out a tax return. The exception is holders of a C settlement permit, and people married to a Swiss national or to a C permit holder, who are taxed under the standard procedure instead.
What can I give a lender instead of tax returns?
Twelve months of payslips, your annual salary certificate from your employer, your employment contract separating base salary from bonus and allowances, and bank statements showing the salary arriving. Swiss payslips itemise the deduction at source clearly, so an assessor can reconcile gross and net. Assembled properly this evidence is often more consistent than an Australian file, because it is documented monthly rather than annually.
Can I take my Swiss pension with me when I move back to Australia?
Usually yes, in cash. The LOB Guarantee Fund restricts cash payment of second pillar balances only where four conditions all apply, one of which is moving to an EU or EFTA country. Australia is neither, so for an Australian going home that restriction generally does not bite, and the Fund states that no clarification is needed for departures outside the EU or EFTA. Take the tax consequences to a cross-border adviser before withdrawing.
Is my position different from a colleague moving to Germany?
Yes, materially. Someone moving to an EU or EFTA country who must be covered by compulsory state pension insurance there cannot take the mandatory portion in cash. It stays in a blocked vested benefits account or policy until ordinary retirement age, or no earlier than five years before it. Two people leaving the same employer in the same month can be in completely different positions, decided purely by destination.
How much Swiss tax will I pay at source?
There is no single national figure. The rate of tax deducted at source varies from canton to canton, so the answer in Zurich, Geneva and Zug differs. Your cantonal tax authority is the right source for your own rate. We are mortgage brokers, not tax agents, and we would rather send you to the authority than quote a number that does not apply to you.
How do I buy a home in Australia from Switzerland, step by step?
Assemble the salary evidence first: twelve months of payslips, the annual salary certificate, the contract that separates base from bonus, and statements showing the pay arriving, because there may be no Swiss tax return to hand over. Get a pre-approval on that file with a lender that accepts francs. Book certification at the Australian post in Bern or Geneva. Search with a buyers agent or family in Australia, have an Australian conveyancer review the contract, sign electronically, transfer the deposit with statements showing the trail, and settle through PEXA. Expect each question to cost a day across the time difference, so send complete files.
Sources
- ch.ch, a service of the Confederation, cantons and communes, “Tax at source in Switzerland”, read 10 September 2026: ch.ch
- State Secretariat for Migration, residence permits for non-EU and EFTA nationals, read 10 September 2026: sem.admin.ch
- LOB Guarantee Fund, “Cash payment on departure abroad”, read 10 September 2026: sfbvg.ch
- Australian Embassy Switzerland, notarial services: switzerland.embassy.gov.au
- Australian Government foreign investment rules: foreigninvestment.gov.au
Coming home, and wondering about the pension? One call, no obligation.
We will map what you can borrow, what evidence replaces the Swiss tax return you do not have, and how a second pillar payment behaves once it lands in an Australian account as a deposit.
Book a free Switzerland expat call with a former bankerAbout the author. Ahmed Lotfi is co-founder of Everstone Finance and a former banker who now works as a mortgage and finance broker in South Yarra, Melbourne, arranging home, investment and commercial lending for Australians at home and abroad. Everstone Finance operates under the Best Interests Duty as Credit Representative 574314 of LMG Broker Services Pty Ltd, Australian Credit Licence 517921.