Your car in your tax return: what it's worth, and why

If you own your car privately, it belongs in your taxable wealth in Zurich and Aargau, declared at its tax value for the current year. That value gets written down every year. A car that cost CHF 30'000 new and is two years old sits in your Zurich wealth at CHF 10'800 for the 2025 tax year, and the wealth tax on that runs from a few francs to a few tens of francs. A leased car doesn't appear at all, because the leasing company owns it while the lease runs. A car bought on a loan does belong to you, and the outstanding balance counts against you as a debt. The one car that breaks the pattern is a valuable classic.

Your car is wealth, but at today's value

A privately owned car sits in the wealth statement (Vermögen) next to your bank balances and your securities, at a figure that gets set again every year. What counts is what the car is worth now, and after two or three years that's well below what the contract said. The tax office starts from a base price and writes it down year after year, until there's barely anything left to declare. In Zurich that base price is what you paid for the car, in Aargau it's the catalog price of the model. So the longer you keep the same car, the smaller the number you enter, without anything changing about the car itself. The wealth tax then applies to your total holdings, the car included.

How the value is worked out (Zurich vs Aargau)

The two cantons get to a similar place by different routes. The percentages below are guide figures for the method in use today, and rates and tables are reviewed periodically.

Zurich (Wegleitung §39) uses a declining balance: each year the car keeps about 60 % of the previous year's value, so it sheds roughly 40 % a year, starting from the price you paid. Aargau (Wegleitung §28) applies a fixed percentage of the catalog price (the list price for the model), stepped by the car's age since first registration.

Worth checking: these percentages describe how Zurich and Aargau do it, and they stay guide figures. Other cantons run their own rules, and the tables get adjusted from time to time. Your cantonal guide (the Wegleitung) carries the current version, and for a car with real value a short question to your cantonal tax office settles it for your own situation.

What a CHF 30'000 car is worth two years on

No garage offers you the new price for a three-year-old car, and the tax office starts from the same instinct. Say you buy a new car in Zurich for CHF 30'000, first registered in 2023. For the 2025 tax year it's two years old, so the declining balance applies twice:

CHF 30'000 × 0.6² = CHF 10'800

That CHF 10'800 joins your taxable wealth for the year. What it actually costs you comes down to your canton and your municipality, plus how much wealth you hold besides the car. Swiss wealth tax rates are low, which is why an everyday car stays a minor line. The figures here are guide amounts, and your own canton and tax year decide the exact result.

Preparing the return in TaxWize, you enter the purchase price and the first registration year and, for the cantons of Zurich and Aargau, get back the tax value estimated with the method described above. Leased cars stay out of the wealth total on their own, and a car loan lands on the debt side.

Buying a used car

A used car runs on the same rule from a different starting point: the price you actually paid, with the original showroom price out of the picture. From there the value keeps sliding each year, so an older second-hand car enters your wealth at a modest figure and gets smaller from there. The tax office needs the price and the year the car was first put on the road, and that's the whole input.

Leasing, and buying the car at the end

While the lease runs, the car isn't yours on paper. The leasing company owns it, so it never reaches your wealth statement at all, and the lease payments on a privately used car aren't deductible either.

That flips the day you pay the residual value and become the owner. From then on the car is declared like any other car you bought, starting from the buyout price and written down each year as it ages.

A car bought on a loan

Finance the car with a loan instead of a lease and both sides of the picture move. You own the car, so it goes in at its tax value. The outstanding loan is a debt (Schulden), and debts come off your wealth, while the interest on the loan is deductible from your income. So a financed car adds its tax value on one side and takes the loan balance off on the other.

Classic cars are the exception

The yearly write-down leaves an ordinary 15-year-old car worth almost nothing for tax. A classic or collector car (an Oldtimer) breaks that pattern, because its market value can be high and can climb rather than fall. What counts then is the real market value, not the near-zero a depreciation table would produce. If you own one, it is worth asking your cantonal tax office how they would like it valued, and keeping evidence that supports a realistic market figure. A car in that category carries amounts that show up in your wealth total. That's the one case where a car moves the wealth tax noticeably.