Pillar 3a buy-in: 2026 is the first year it works

Pillar 3a has had a buy-in since 1 January 2025, and 2026 is the first year anyone can use it. Only gaps that opened after that date count, so the earliest is the gap from 2025. For 2026 a buy-in is capped at CHF 7'258, it comes on top of your ordinary annual contribution, and the whole amount comes off your taxable income. The money has to reach your 3a provider during 2026. The deduction then shows up on the tax return for the 2026 tax period, the one you fill in from January 2027. Before you transfer anything, your provider needs a written request from you.

Why 2025 is the earliest gap you can close

The ten-year window behaves like a loyalty card handed out on 1 January 2025. There are no squares on it for the years before that, however little you paid in back then.

The transitional provision puts it in a single sentence: contribution gaps that arose before the amendment came into force cannot be closed by a buy-in. So someone whose last 3a payment was in 2020 can close the 2025 gap in 2026, and the missed years from 2021 to 2024 stay missed permanently.

After that the window rolls forward: what counts is the ten calendar years before the buy-in year, whether or not you could contribute in each of them.

Who actually qualifies?

This is aimed at anyone who paid in less than the maximum during 2025 while still earning: a job change, a lean December.

Four conditions have to hold together, and each one rules out people who assume otherwise.

• AHV-liable income in the year of the buy-in. You have to be earning income subject to AHV contributions in Switzerland, which is what makes paying into pillar 3a possible that year at all.
• AHV-liable income in the gap year too. A year in which you had no right to contribute can't have produced a gap. A year of study or an unpaid break creates no buy-in potential.
• The ordinary contribution first. In the year you buy in, the full annual contribution allowed in your case has to be paid. The buy-in is added to it, never substituted for it.
• No retirement benefit drawn yet. Once you've taken a retirement benefit out of your pillar 3a, buy-ins stop, and that covers every 3a account you hold.

The third condition has a reason behind it. If a buy-in could replace the ordinary contribution, you'd open a fresh gap in the same year with a fresh ten-year window, and the deadline could be stretched indefinitely. So a year in which you buy in can never itself contain a gap.

There's no upper age limit as such: contributions, buy-ins included, run until at most five years past the reference age, as long as you're still working and haven't started drawing your 3a.

Whether it applies in your case is something your own 3a certificates and salary statements will show.

How much can you put in?

Two limits run at the same time, and the lower one decides.

The first is your buy-in potential: the sum of your individual yearly gaps over the previous ten years. A yearly gap is the difference between the maximum you were allowed to pay that year and what you actually paid. Nothing gets compounded along the way.

The second is a fixed annual cap of 8 % of the upper BVG threshold, which works out at CHF 7'258 for 2026. This so-called small contribution caps the buy-in even for people without a pension fund, whose ordinary contribution follows a completely different rule.

One restriction gets missed when people plan ahead: a gap year can only ever be closed by one single buy-in. A gap of CHF 9'000 can't be split across two years. It gets closed in one go as far as the cap allows, and whatever is left stays open. One payment covering several small yearly gaps is fine.

The figure for 2027 hasn't been published. The federal social insurance office states that the small contribution is normally adjusted every two years, and that 2025 and 2026 carry the same amount.

What Marco's 2025 gap is worth

Marco is employed, has a pension fund at work, and 2025 was tight. Instead of the CHF 7'258 he was allowed, he paid in CHF 3'000.

In 2026 he first pays the full ordinary contribution of CHF 7'258, because without it there is no buy-in at all. Then he transfers CHF 4'258 as the buy-in. His 2026 tax return carries CHF 11'516 under pillar 3a instead of CHF 7'258.

Those extra CHF 4'258 come off his taxable income. At a marginal rate of roughly 25 % across federal, cantonal and municipal tax, that's around CHF 1'065 less tax for that one year.

About the figures: CHF 7'258 applies to the 2025 and 2026 tax periods. The marginal rate here is an assumption for the example; the rate and the maximum that apply to you are the ones your provider and your cantonal tax office state.

Ordinary contribution and buy-in side by side

The paperwork happens before the payment

You apply to your provider in writing beforehand, stating the amount, which years you're closing and by how much, and what you already paid into those years, with the payment dates.

In the same request you confirm that the ordinary contribution for the buy-in year is fully paid, that you had AHV-liable income in the years concerned, that no buy-in has yet been made for those years, and that you haven't drawn a retirement benefit. If the conditions are met, the provider approves the payment.

Only then does money move. For the 2026 tax period what counts is what reaches the provider during 2026, and a request sent just before Christmas leaves little room for the check. The certificate you get afterwards lists the buy-in separately from the ordinary contribution, with its date, and that is what the tax office reads the deduction from.

Two certificates, one deduction

Buy in during 2026 and the 2026 return carries two certificates rather than one, both feeding the same deduction. TaxWize reads 3a certificates off your uploaded documents and records each payment separately, the buy-in as well as the ordinary contribution for 2026; every value can be checked and corrected.

For how pillar 3a is taxed from your first payment to the payout, see pillar 3a and tax. To see roughly what a lower taxable income is worth in your municipality, use the tax comparison.

Sources

• Ordinance on the tax deductibility of contributions to recognised pension schemes (BVV 3, SR 831.461.3), version in force from 01.01.2025: Art. 7 para. 1 (ordinary contribution), Art. 7a (buy-in: conditions, cap at 8 % of the upper BVG threshold, one buy-in per yearly gap, exclusion after a retirement benefit is drawn), Art. 7b (request and confirmations), Art. 8 para. 2 (certificate), transitional provision to the amendment of 06.11.2024: fedlex.admin.ch, retrieved 31.08.2026
• Federal Social Insurance Office (BSV/OFAS), "Die dritte Säule", section on buy-ins into pillar 3a (first possible in 2026 for 2025; CHF 7'258 for 2026; ordinary contribution as a precondition; fully deductible): bsv.admin.ch, retrieved 31.08.2026
• Federal Social Insurance Office, FAQ on pillar 3a buy-ins: when a buy-in is first possible, how far back buy-ins reach, the main conditions, and the maximum buy-in amount (CHF 7'258 for 2025 and 2026, normally adjusted every two years): faq.bsv.admin.ch, retrieved 31.08.2026
• Federal Social Insurance Office, explanatory report on the BVV 3 amendment introducing pillar 3a buy-ins, November 2024 (transitional rule worked through on a 2020/2025 example, buy-in potential calculated without interest, the subsidiary nature of the buy-in): newsd.admin.ch, retrieved 31.08.2026