Property maintenance deductions in Switzerland: what counts for 2025

The value-preserving part of what you spend on a property is deductible, and the value-adding part stays out. The benchmark for telling them apart isn't the value of the house: it's the value of the installation being replaced. That single sentence, from canton Zurich's own memorandum for tax officials, settles more borderline cases than any rule of thumb.

If you'd rather not itemise, there's a flat rate. In canton Zurich it's 20 % of gross rental income or imputed rental value, regardless of how old the building is. For direct federal tax it's 10 % for buildings up to ten years old and 20 % for older ones. On a newer house, that puts two different flat rates on the same tax return.

Everything here comes from the federal property costs ordinance (SR 642.116 of 09.03.2018, in the version in force since 01.01.2020), memorandum ZStB Nr. 30.3 of the canton Zurich tax office dated 26.03.2021, and canton Aargau's guidance for the 2025 return, all read on 06.08.2026. Cantons update these rates, so the current figure for your tax year is worth checking on your cantonal tax administration's own page.

What the canton accepts as maintenance

A washing machine dies after twelve years and gets replaced. That's maintenance. Put a washing machine into a flat that never had one and it's a first purchase, not a replacement. Zurich's catalogue carries both as separate lines under item 4.2: repair or equivalent replacement fully deductible, first purchase not deductible at all.

The memorandum puts the rule underneath like this. Value-preserving spending is spending that serves to maintain existing value, leaving the property unchanged in its design and its purpose. And deductible maintenance has the property of needing to be done again after a certain interval. If it recurs, it's maintenance.

Value-adding spending, by contrast, is what puts the property into a lastingly better condition, lifting it into the standard of a better-equipped, more valuable property. This is where the benchmark from the opening does the work, and it aims narrow: what gets compared is whatever installation was replaced. A new bathroom barely moves the value of a whole house. Measured against the bathroom from 1985 it's still an improvement, and that's what the tax office looks at.

Most real invoices land in a third category: mixed spending. Where one invoice covers both, the value-preserving share is allowed and the value-adding share isn't. For conversions of existing buildings the canton wants precise information for that split, covering the work carried out and the condition of the object before and after.

The catalogue, line by line

Canton Zurich publishes the split as a catalogue of quotas. 1/1 means fully deductible, 2/3 means two thirds, 1/4 means a quarter. An extract from the catalogue, limited to the items a typical renovation actually touches:

The flooring line is the counterintuitive one. Parquet instead of carpet counts as an equivalent replacement and is fully deductible, even though parquet is the more expensive material. What decides it is the state of that spot beforehand. So a replacement drops to two thirds as soon as it improves comfort, and the example the catalogue gives for that is tiles or panelling on a wall that had only been painted.

The catalogue isn't exhaustive. It gives reference values for the normal case, which hold unless the taxpayer produces different evidence, and for complex or extensive renovation work the canton wants the specific circumstances clarified in detail anyway. Scaffolding costs get apportioned in the same ratio as the maintenance and investment shares they serve, so they follow the work.

Energy measures sit outside the split

For measures serving energy saving and environmental protection, the value-preserving versus value-adding distinction is not made at all. These can be value-adding in character and stay deductible. The catalogue flags them with an "E": insulating a facade, replacing windows with more energy-efficient ones, insulating a terrace floor, connecting to a district heating plant, additional heating installations that save energy.

Limits come with that. Such investments are deductible only in existing buildings, so energy-saving measures carried out while putting up a new build are not. And where a public body subsidises the measure, only the share the taxpayer actually bears stays deductible.

Where the non-deductible money goes

Value-adding spending drops out of income tax. It isn't lost, though. It counts as investment cost against the property gains tax, meaning it surfaces at the moment the property is sold and a gain has to be taxed.

In practice that comes down to one habit: keep the invoices for the value-adding share of a renovation, even though they do nothing this year. Anyone who can't find the paperwork at the point of sale pays tax on a correspondingly larger gain.

Flat rate or actual costs? Two rates on one return

Instead of the actual costs, you can claim a flat deduction, except on property that third parties use predominantly for business purposes (SR 642.116 Art. 5 para. 3). It covers all the ordinary items: maintenance, insurance premiums, third-party administration, investments serving energy saving and environmental protection, and demolition costs ahead of a replacement building. Take the flat rate and there's no further deduction on top for the energy work. Costs of heritage-conservation work and ground rent are treated as extraordinary, and in canton Zurich those may be claimed on top of the flat rate.

The rates for the 2025 tax year:

What counts federally is the age of the building at the start of the tax period; canton Aargau uses 01.01.2025 as the reference date for the 2025 return. For Lucerne, Solothurn, Bern, Zug and Schwyz the rates weren't read on those cantons' own pages for this piece, so they aren't asserted here.

One note on the base, and it costs money to miss: the imputed rental value used for direct federal tax isn't the same figure in every canton. The federal tax administration's own documentation says that where a canton sets the imputed rental value very low, a separate figure is worked out for federal tax by adding a percentage surcharge to the cantonal one, and that this currently applies in slightly more than half the cantons.

Canton Aargau is one of them and says so in its own guidance: Aargau imputed rental values are lower than the figures that count for direct federal tax, so the federal tax administration set a surcharge of 12.9 % on non-agricultural property for the 2025 tax period. The federal flat rate then runs on that higher value, and the guidance states explicitly that the 10 % or 20 % deduction is adjusted automatically to match. In canton Zurich the question doesn't arise: the federal administration's cantonal table records "dBSt: Der kantonale EMW wird übernommen", the cantonal figure carries over. Which value applies in your own canton is in that same table, canton by canton.

Zurich is the interesting case, because its rate has no age band at all. On a house built in 2019 with an imputed rental value of CHF 28'000.00, the 2025 tax year gives CHF 5'600.00 cantonally and CHF 2'800.00 federally, off the same number, on the same return.

The choice itself resets. It's made afresh for every tax period and every property, so itemising in 2025 doesn't stop you taking the flat rate in 2026, and with two properties you can take the flat rate on one and itemise the other.

One detail on the base that moves real money on let property: gross rental income doesn't include the service charges. Income for heating, hot water and periodic stairwell cleaning comes off before the flat rate is calculated.

Which tax year do the costs land in?

In canton Zurich, for property held as private assets, the deduction is taken either when the debt falls due or when it is paid. Zurich's memorandum then adds a sentence that's easy to skim past: once that choice is made, you have to stick with it. File by invoice date and you keep filing by invoice date, even in a year where switching would pay. That freedom sits in Zurich's memorandum, which makes it a Zurich rule. Whether the other cantons leave the same choice open, or prescribe the moment instead, wasn't checked for this piece. Which rule applies is in your own canton's guidance.

Ordinary property maintenance can't be carried forward. If more maintenance falls into a year than there is income to absorb, the excess is gone.

The law makes two exceptions, both for costs from the 2020 tax period onwards. Investments serving energy saving and environmental protection, and demolition costs ahead of a replacement building, can be deducted in the two following tax periods to the extent they can't be fully accounted for in the current one. The carry-forward only happens where net income is negative. And in a tax period carrying such costs the flat deduction falls away, so the rest of the maintenance has to be itemised too.

That sets the timing lever on a renovation running over several years. The costs bite where the due date or the payment sits, so a renovation spanning two tax periods spreads the deduction across two years. Whether that's the cheaper route depends on your marginal rate and on what else falls into each year. In a quiet year the flat rate can already exceed the actual costs, and then an extra invoice buys nothing.

Not deductible, however real the work: an owner's own labour. Paint the wall yourself and you can't claim your own effort as maintenance, because you aren't taxed on it as income either. Zurich's catalogue repeats the same caveat in its entry on ordinary garden upkeep.

What a CHF 30'000.00 bathroom actually returns

A detached house in canton Zurich, built in 2019, imputed rental value CHF 28'000.00. In the 2025 tax year the bathroom is rebuilt from scratch including the sanitary fittings, invoiced at CHF 30'000.00.

The catalogue puts modernisation or a full rebuild of a bathroom at 2/3 as maintenance:

CHF 20'000.00 works as a deduction in the 2025 tax year. CHF 10'000.00 doesn't, but stays on the books as investment cost for the property gains tax.

Against that, the flat rate in the same year: 20 % of CHF 28'000.00 is CHF 5'600.00 in canton Zurich, 10 % is CHF 2'800.00 federally. Itemising is comfortably the larger figure here. A year later with no major invoice the picture flips: the flat CHF 5'600.00 stands against a few hundred francs of servicing, and the flat rate is the bigger number.

How much tax the CHF 20'000.00 actually saves depends on your marginal rate, which depends on where you live and what else you earn. A deduction lowers taxable income, so the saving comes out smaller than the deduction itself. Roughly what a franc of deduction is worth in your municipality is what the tax comparison shows.

TaxWize calculates property maintenance for the 2025 tax year at each canton's own rate, and keeps the cantonal and the federal figure apart so the two don't get mixed up. You still file the return through your canton's official portal.

On the abolition of the imputed rental value from 01.01.2029, and what happens to the maintenance deduction then: imputed rental value abolition 2029. Until then, for tax years 2025 through 2028, the system itself stays in place: imputed rental value as income, maintenance costs deductible. The rates and quotas are still revised annually by the Confederation and the cantons.