Make life easier for yourself and your customers: Register for VAT in Switzerland in five easy steps

It’s not hard to register for VAT in Switzerland. Here’s how to get a Swiss VAT number.

1. Find out if you need to register for Swiss VAT

First you have to find out whether you’re required to register for VAT, or if you can do so voluntarily (voluntary registration can make it easier and more pleasant for customers to do business with you). 

Examples of when you may need to register:

• You do construction work in Switzerland
• You provide digital services to private individuals in Switzerland, or
• You sell goods online to customers in Switzerland. 

If you’re subject to compulsory VAT registration, you have to register within 30 days of the requirement arising. 

You can find out more about whether your business requires VAT registration here. 

2. Find a fiscal representative

If you’re located or your company is established outside Switzerland and you’re registering for VAT, you need to appoint a so-called fiscal representative. This is a business or individual acting as your ‘mailbox’. Rather than sending documents or queries to you abroad, the Swiss Federal Tax Administration will send all correspondence to your fiscal representative in Switzerland.

The fiscal representative’s job includes helping you comply with the VAT law. They’ll also be able to answer any questions you may have about VAT in Switzerland and your obligations.

3. Complete the VAT registration form

Now you can start the actual VAT registration process! You need to complete a questionnaire about your business, its activity in Switzerland and expected turnover. You also need to provide information about your fiscal representative. 

You can fill out the questionnaire on the Federal Tax Administration’s website. Alternatively, you can do it the traditional way and ask your fiscal representative to complete the form for you. 

4. Appoint a fiscal representative

Once you’ve completed and submitted the VAT registration questionnaire, you have to formally give power of attorney to your fiscal representative. For this, you use a form provided by the Federal Tax Administration, making sure it’s signed by both you and your fiscal representative before returning it.

The Federal Tax Administration will then issue you with a Swiss VAT number. 

The VAT number has the format CHE-123.456.789 MWST (where ‘MWST’ means ‘VAT’). You can check whether the number has been issued in an online register.

You can now start issuing invoices including Swiss VAT. You can also register to file your Swiss VAT returns electronically. More on this in one of our next blog entries!

5. Provide financial security

You need to take care of one last step to finalise the VAT registration process: as a foreign business, you have to provide financial security to the Federal Tax Administration. You can do this by providing a bank guarantee issued by a Swiss-domiciled bank or a Swiss branch of a foreign bank, or you can make a cash deposit with the Federal Tax Administration. The authority will access this money if, for example, you fail to pay the VAT collected, or if you become insolvent. 

The security is usually calculated as follows, but other methods are possible:

• 3% of the expected taxable Swiss turnover (excluding exports from Switzerland to other countries)
• Minimum amount: CHF 2,000
• Maximum amount: CHF 250,000

As you can see, registering for VAT in Switzerland is a simple, straightforward process. You can normally expect the registration to be completed within about 3 weeks (the faster you return documents to the tax administration, the faster your application will be processed). 

We have experienced some delays recently, probably because the tax administration has changed IT systems, but we expect things to return to normal shortly.