Two employers, a change of hours: the 2025 Zurich tax return

Two salary certificates for one tax year land on one line of a canton Zurich return: income from employment, the net salaries added together. The flat deduction for other professional costs, 3 % of net salary with a minimum of CHF 2'000 and a maximum of CHF 4'000, is then granted once per person per year, not once per employer. The annual ceilings for meals and commuting work the same way. And a lower workload moves less than most people expect: the pillar 3a ceiling with a pension fund stays at CHF 7'258 for the 2025 tax year, and the annual travel pass costs what it always did. What does move is driven by working days. The gap between two jobs, meanwhile, is something the canton wants labelled, with the unemployment benefits sitting on their own line.

Two salary certificates, one line

A tax return knows employers only as attachments; the arithmetic runs per person and per tax year. One suitcase for the whole year, however many legs.

What goes in the box is the net salary, meaning pay after AHV/IV/EO and unemployment-insurance contributions, ongoing pension-fund contributions and the premium for compulsory non-occupational accident insurance. Two jobs held one after the other are both main employment. The secondary-employment line is for a second activity held at the same time, not for the job that started in October. Both certificates get attached.

That one employer produces exactly one certificate for one year is in the federal guide in as many words: splitting into several individual certificates is in principle not permitted. A change of workload mid-year isn't among the exceptions. Where an employer does issue more than one, the comments box carries the count.

The deduction you only get once

The flat deduction for other professional costs covers work clothing, tools, professional literature, a home study and contributions to professional associations. In canton Zurich it runs on the combined net salary of every certificate a person holds, and the floor and the ceiling apply to that one total.

Take the 2025 tax year, a single filer resident in canton Zurich:

• Salary certificate A, January to June: net salary CHF 42'000
• Salary certificate B, October to December: net salary CHF 24'000
• Unemployment benefits, July to September: CHF 12'000

Per certificate, 3 % comes out below the minimum both times, so twice CHF 2'000, CHF 4'000 in total. Calculated across the year, 3 % of CHF 78'000 gives CHF 2'340 instead. The minimum never bites here, because the 3 % sits above it. The CHF 1'660 difference is an over-declaration, and an over-declaration is the part that can be corrected at assessment. The example shows the once-per-year rule, not a final figure: for direct federal tax the ordinance requires an appropriate reduction where the work covered only part of the year, and prescribes no method (see below).

The ceilings follow the same rule. Commuting costs are capped at CHF 5'200 a year in canton Zurich and at CHF 3'300 for direct federal tax. Meals away from home are capped at CHF 3'200 a year, or CHF 1'600 at the half rate. Zurich's work-expenses form does let you list two places of work separately, each with its own working days, distance and trips per day. They're added together all the same, under one ceiling.

Your salary certificate doesn't record your workload

Not as a figure, at any rate. The form has no field for the employment percentage, and a move from 100 % to 80 % leaves nothing behind on it: no date, no split of the salary before and after.

What the rules do provide for is a remark without numbers. Someone hired at a reduced workload should get a note such as «Teilzeitbeschäftigung» in the comments box. 80 % and 20 % produce the same wording. Whether that remark is also required when the workload drops during an ongoing contract is covered neither by the guide nor by the official FAQ on the salary certificate.

Recorded precisely, by contrast, is the employment period: the entry and exit dates in the "for the period from ... to ..." box. That is the detail that matters after a job change.

How many working days sit behind the percentage?

It sounds like a technicality and it decides almost everything.

Pillar 3a stays put. The ceiling hangs off the upper BVG threshold, a fixed franc amount, and not off the share you work. Going from 100 % to 80 % with a pension fund and a continuing salary costs you none of it.

The travel pass stays put too. What's deductible is the necessary cost of the subscription, and a zone pass costs the same on four working days a week as on five.

What moves are the items calculated per working day. Meals away from home count CHF 15 per working day, or CHF 7.50 at the half rate. Car journeys are working days times kilometres times trips per day, at CHF 0.70 per kilometre for 2025, and the Zurich work-expenses form prints «in der Regel begrenzt auf 240 Tage». So two people on the same 80 % end up with different deductions: four long days a week is not the same thing as five short ones.

One item is genuinely open. The federal ordinance on professional costs requires the flat deduction to be "reduced appropriately" where the work is part-time or covers only part of the year, and prescribes no method. The Zurich directive on flat-rate work expenses and the cantonal guide don't mention part-time work anywhere. How the cantonal column is handled in a part-time year is therefore not published, and depending on your situation it may be worth a question to the tax office.

What about the months without a job?

The Zurich guide is unusually direct here: where there are gaps in employment, they are to be labelled explicitly, so that it is clear no income statement was forgotten.

The benefits themselves don't sit with the salaries. They go on the line for replacement income from unemployment insurance, with the unemployment fund's statement attached, and they're taxable in full. Some funds certify them on the same form that otherwise carries a salary, which the rules provide for.

Those months bring no work expenses with them. Meals and commuting hang on working days, and with no working days both are zero. One exception runs the other way: in the Zurich calculation the daily benefit counts towards the base for the 3 % flat deduction. That's why the CHF 12'000 above sits inside the CHF 78'000. This treatment is measured against the canton's own calculator rather than stated in the guide.

And on the return itself

Every franc figure here belongs to the 2025 tax year; for another year the current values are on the canton's and the Confederation's own pages. How much your municipality moves the result is what the tax comparison shows, and the detail of commuting and meal costs is in the piece on commuting and work costs.

When three statements for a single year end up on the kitchen table, that's where TaxWize starts: read them, add up what belongs together, show what's still missing, for the 2025 tax year in canton Zurich too. Filing stays your step, through the cantonal portal.

Sources

All sources were read on 10.08.2026.

• Guide to completing the salary certificate and pension statement, form 11, 2026 edition, current at the time of writing (employment period, part-time remark, the ban on splitting, certification of unemployment replacement income): estv.admin.ch
• FAQ on the salary certificate and pension statement, 2026 edition (checked for any rule on a workload change during an ongoing contract): ssk-csi.ch
• Ordinance on professional costs, SR 642.118.1 (reduction of the flat deduction for part-time work, meal and travel rates in the annex) (the linked version already carries the 75-Rappen rate applying from tax period 2026; for tax year 2025 the rate is 70 Rappen): fedlex.admin.ch
• Federal Tax Administration tax folder for the 2025 tax period, professional costs of employed persons (flat deduction for other professional costs): estv2.admin.ch
• Canton Zurich guide to the 2025 tax return, main edition (net salary, attachments, gaps in employment, unemployment benefits): zh.ch
• Zurich Finance Directorate directive on flat-rate work expenses for employed persons, from the 2024 tax period (3 % / CHF 2'000 / CHF 4'000, meals, the CHF 5'200 commuting cap, CHF 700 for bicycles): notes.zh.ch
• BVV 3, SR 831.461.3, article 7 (the pillar 3a ceiling as a franc amount tied to the upper BVG threshold): fedlex.admin.ch
• Canton Zurich 2025 tax return forms 300 (main form) and 360 (work expenses), main edition: read from the canton's published form set, no direct file link cited.