Swiss VAT Rates Explained: Standard, Reduced and Special

Swiss VAT (the Mehrwertsteuer, or MWST) is not one rate but three: a standard 8.1%, a reduced 2.6%, and a special 3.8% for accommodation. Charging the wrong rate is a common and costly mistake, so it is worth knowing exactly where each band begins and ends.

The three rates and what they cover

The standard rate of 8.1% applies to everything not expressly listed at a lower rate. Professional services, consulting, IT work, trades and most retail goods all fall here. If you sell your time as a freelancer or SME, you will almost always invoice at 8.1%.

The reduced rate of 2.6% covers essentials: food and non-alcoholic drinks, medicines, books, newspapers and magazines without advertising, and — since January 2025 — menstrual hygiene products. Electronic books and newspapers count too, provided they have no advertising character.

The special rate of 3.8% applies only to overnight accommodation, meaning hotels, holiday apartments and other lodging. It is a separate band, not a subset of the reduced rate, and it does not extend to breakfast or restaurant service, which stay at 8.1%.

These rates have been unchanged since 1 January 2024, when they replaced 7.7%, 2.5% and 3.7%. A planned rise to fund a 13th AHV pension payment is under discussion but would not take effect before 2028 at the earliest.

When VAT applies to you at all

You only charge MWST if you are registered. Mandatory registration kicks in once your annual worldwide taxable turnover reaches CHF 100,000, and you must register within 30 days of crossing the line. Below that, you generally do not charge VAT — and cannot show it on your invoices.

Voluntary registration is allowed and can make sense. If your clients are mostly VAT-registered businesses, charging MWST costs them nothing because they reclaim it as input tax (Vorsteuerabzug), while you gain the right to deduct your own input tax.

Be consistent once you are in. A registered business must charge the correct rate on every taxable supply, and the rate you show is legally what you owe the tax office — not what you happened to collect.

Exports and services to customers abroad are mostly zero-rated, and areas such as health and education are exempt. These are exceptions to the three-rate picture, so check your specific case before invoicing.

Showing the rate correctly on the invoice

Every VAT-registered Swiss invoice must state, for each position, the net amount, the applicable rate, and the VAT amount. A missing or wrong rate makes the invoice formally defective and can cost your client the input-tax deduction.

Calculate the gross amount by multiplying the net by 1.081, 1.026 or 1.038 as appropriate, and round the VAT to the nearest Rappen. Show all three figures per line — net, rate, VAT — so the client can reconcile everything at a glance.

If you invoice at different rates on one document, group the positions by rate and show a subtotal for each. Mixing 8.1% and 2.6% items under a single line is a classic audit finding, and easy to avoid with a clean layout.

Your invoicing tool should hold the rates and apply them automatically. With facturio, the correct MWST rate is applied per position and printed on every invoice, so you never have to remember which band applies mid-invoice.

Planning for the future rate change

The 13th AHV pension payment, approved by voters in March 2024, must eventually be funded, and a VAT increase is the agreed mechanism. Parliament approved raising the standard rate from 8.1% to 8.5% and the accommodation rate from 3.8% to 4.0%, with the reduced rate unchanged.

Because it requires a constitutional amendment, the change faces a referendum on 29 November 2026 and would only take effect later — currently expected in 2028. Nothing changes on your invoices until the vote is decided and a date is set.

Still, prepare now. Rate changes are felt most in contracts that span the switch-over date, where the invoicing date, not the contract date, normally determines the applicable rate. Keep that in mind for long-running retainers and projects.

Stay current by checking the Federal Tax Administration (Eidgenössische Steuerverwaltung) rates page before any filing. A few minutes of verification each year is far cheaper than reissuing a batch of invoices at the wrong rate.