The Federal Tax Administration (FTA) has published an analysis of the use of the tax deduction for childcare costs for direct federal tax purposes based on 2021 tax data. The total tax relief amounts to around CHF 100 million. In practice, the deduction is mainly used by urban, high-earning dual-income households: Almost 60% of the tax relief is accounted for by the fifth of taxpayers with the highest income.
A large proportion of the deductions claimed are well below the maximum amount of CHF 10,100 per child applicable in 2021; around a quarter do not exceed CHF 1,600. There are clear regional differences: In urban cantons such as Vaud, the deduction is used significantly more frequently and to a greater extent than in rural regions such as Ticino.
The French study (with German summary) is available here .
