Imputed rental value ends in 2029, and the deductions go with it

At its meeting of 1 April 2026 the Federal Council decided to bring the reform of home-ownership taxation into force on 1 January 2029. If you have a tax return in front of you right now, that settles the question that matters most: tax years 2025, 2026, 2027 and 2028 are still assessed entirely under today's law. You keep declaring the imputed rental value (Eigenmietwert), and you keep deducting maintenance costs and interest on your debt.

From 2029 both sides go at once. The taxation of the imputed rental value on owner-occupied property ends, and so does the deduction for property maintenance costs, at federal, cantonal and communal level (source: Federal Council media release of 1 April 2026, admin.ch). That second half gets mentioned less often, and it lands directly on an ordinary homeowner.

I read the Federal Council release, the vote page and the federal fact sheet on the new interest rules because I need to know when the tax logic I build has to change. The question most people actually have, whether they end up better or worse off, comes down to a subtraction with three figures in it, and all three are already on your last assessment.

Two accounts closing at once

Live in your own home and Swiss tax law treats you as two parties, the tenant and the landlord. The imputed rental value is the rent you charge yourself and declare as income, even though no franc changes hands. And because there is a landlord on the other side of that arrangement, you get to claim the landlord's costs too: the upkeep of the property and the interest on the debt behind it.

On 1 January 2029 the arrangement is dissolved. The fictional income goes, and the costs that hung off it go with it. What the reform removes is not a tax, it's a matched pair of entries.

What changes on 1 January 2029, item by item

The table sets the adopted federal rules against the law as it stands. What the cantons do with it comes further down.

Sources for the table: the Federal Council media release of 1 April 2026 and the Federal Department of Finance vote page on the reform of home-ownership taxation (admin.ch, efd.admin.ch), read on 30 July 2026.

Why the vote and the reform are three years apart

Voters accepted the reform on 28 September 2025, with 57.7 % in favour against 42.3 % opposed on a turnout of 49.5 %. The cantonal majority was clearer than the popular one: 14 cantons and 5 half-cantons in favour, 6 cantons and 1 half-canton against (source: Federal Department of Finance, vote page). Parliament had adopted the law itself on 20 December 2024.

The delay has a plain reason. The cantons have to adapt their own legislation first, and the Konferenz der kantonalen Finanzdirektorinnen und Finanzdirektoren, the conference of the cantonal finance directors, argued in the consultation by majority for entry into force in 2029 at the earliest, so that those changes and any object tax would be ready in time.

The reform is easy to confuse with individual taxation, which Swiss voters accepted in March 2026. They are two separate reforms on two separate timetables.

Will you pay more or less?

Three figures decide it, and you can read all of them off your last assessment.

The first is your interest on debt. From 2029 it stays deductible only in proportion to the value of rented or leased property against total assets. Anyone with no taxable rental or lease income can no longer claim a general interest deduction (source: fact sheet "Neue Schuldzinsenregelung", Federal Department of Finance and Federal Tax Administration, 15 August 2025).

The second is your maintenance spend. Everything you currently deduct for the upkeep of the property falls away in 2029, and it falls away at all three levels of taxation, not just federal.

The third is the imputed rental value itself, which stops appearing as income.

So the answer is arithmetic rather than a position. If the deductions you lose add up to more than the imputed rental value you stop declaring, your taxable income rises. If they add up to less, it falls. Which way that lands for you is something your own assessment says more precisely than any general statement about homeowners.

What your commune charges today is what the tax comparison shows. The reform itself sets no multipliers. It changes the base your canton and commune apply theirs to. What the cantons do with their own rates in response belongs to the open cantonal part.

What happens to CHF 10'000 of mortgage interest

The federal government works the new quota through itself. The method is quotal-restrictive: the numerator holds property used by others, meaning rented and leased property, and the denominator holds total movable and immovable assets. The share that comes out is the share of your interest that stays deductible.

Three cases from the fact sheet of 15 August 2025, each with debt of CHF 500'000 at 2 % interest, so CHF 10'000 of interest a year:

The first row is the one most households will recognise. No rented property means a numerator of zero, and none of the CHF 10'000 stays deductible.

The third row shows the mechanics. One of three properties is rented, and only its value counts in the numerator. Against total assets of CHF 2'100'000 that gives 38.1 %, so CHF 3'810 of the CHF 10'000. And it makes no difference which of the three properties the debt actually sits on, which the fact sheet states explicitly.

Not settled yet: the amounts above are the federal government's own worked examples for the adopted rules, not figures for your assessment. The implementing ordinance and cantonal legislation can still put detail around them before 2029. What counts in the end is the law in force for the tax year concerned, so any planning done today should start from the current position rather than from these numbers.

Does a first-time buyer keep anything?

Yes, for a while. Buying residential property in Switzerland for the first time, and using it as your primary home, comes with a first-time-buyer deduction for interest that is limited both in amount and in time. For married couples the initial ceiling is CHF 10'000, for single taxpayers CHF 5'000. It runs for ten years, and the maximum deductible amount drops each year by ten per cent of that ceiling. After ten years it can't be claimed any more.

Take the household from the first table row again: own home CHF 800'000, bank account CHF 200'000, debt CHF 500'000, interest CHF 10'000. Under the general quota nothing survives. As married first-time buyers it is CHF 10'000 in year one, CHF 9'000 in year two and CHF 8'000 in year three (source: fact sheet, examples 1 and 6).

What the cantons have not decided yet

This is where the certainty stops. The cantons have to adapt their legislation to the reform, and they may introduce an object tax as financial compensation. The new constitutional provision lets cantons and communes levy a special tax on predominantly owner-occupied second properties. It may not be levied on a fully rented second property, where the rental income continues to be taxed as income instead. A subsidiary right to tax second properties outside the canton or abroad is excluded.

On the energy-saving and environmental-protection deduction the picture splits. It falls away for direct federal tax. Cantons may keep providing it, until 2050 at the latest.

What any individual canton intends to do, I can't tell you. I found no published decision for any canton, on the object tax, on its rate, or on the cantonal energy deduction, and I'm not going to name a canton I haven't read on an official source. That applies to the seven cantons I cover in full exactly as it applies to the rest.

The four returns before that

For tax years 2025 through 2028 nothing about your return changes. Declare the imputed rental value, deduct maintenance and interest, under the rules of your canton. The first return under the new law is the one for tax year 2029, which you file in 2030.

Whether it's worth shifting the timing of a larger renovation depends on your own figures and on cantonal rules that haven't been written yet. I'd wait until the cantonal implementation is on the table before doing that calculation, and keep the receipts in the meantime.

For tax year 2025, TaxWize calculates on the law in force today, imputed rental value and the deductions attached to it included. As long as the imputed rental value applies, so up to and including tax year 2028, that is the legal position everything rests on. What applies from 2029 goes in once the Confederation and the cantons have published it, and not before.