3 min readTaxClar
What an eSteuerauszug is – and why there is a barcode on it
The eSteuerauszug under eCH-0196 is a tax statement that the cantonal tax software can read by machine. What it contains, how the barcode works, and what that means for customers of foreign brokers.
Anyone with a securities account at a Swiss bank knows the sheet: once a year a tax statement arrives, with a grey stripe of tiny rectangles at the bottom. That stripe is not decoration. It contains the whole statement a second time, machine-readable, in a format the cantons have agreed on.
The standard: eCH-0196
The format is called eCH-0196. The eCH association maintains standards for digital government in Switzerland; number 0196 is the electronic tax statement. The standard defines an XML schema that holds:
- the person or account the statement belongs to,
- every security with its Valor number or ISIN, holding and tax value as of 31 December,
- every income payment (dividends, interest) with date, amount and currency,
- Swiss withholding tax and foreign source taxes deducted,
- accounts and balances with interest,
- the totals that end up in the tax return.
If you want to see the schema in detail, the eCH-0196 page spells it out element by element, once as a tree and once written onto the completed form.
Why a barcode and not simply a file?
The barcode is a PDF417, a two-dimensional code that carries a few hundred bytes per stripe. A statement with twenty positions needs several stripes; a large portfolio fills several pages.
The reason is pragmatic: the tax statement is a paper document that gets printed, copied, scanned and posted. A barcode survives all of that. The tax office scans the stripe, gets the XML back and never has to retype a number. The same file can of course also be uploaded as a PDF in the online tax return, in which case the barcode is read from the PDF.
What happens when it is read in?
The cantonal tax software – whether it is called ZHprivateTax, eTax or BalTax – reads the barcode and fills in the securities and assets register:
| From the eSteuerauszug | Goes into |
|---|---|
| Tax value of all positions as of 31 December | Assets |
| Gross income subject to withholding tax (income A) | Income, refund claim |
| Gross income without withholding tax (income B) | Income |
| Foreign source tax | Claim for lump-sum tax credit (DA-1) |
Amounts are carried over per position. Whoever checks the statement later sees not just a total, but the individual securities with Valor number and quantity.
And if the broker does not provide one?
Swiss banks usually deliver the eSteuerauszug automatically, many for a fee. Foreign brokers – Interactive Brokers, DEGIRO, Trade Republic, Saxo and others – do not know the format. Their customers get an annual statement, a dozen dividend confirmations and the job of filling in the register themselves.
That is exactly what TaxClar is for: you upload one broker's PDFs, check the table extracted from them and receive a statement under eCH-0196 – with barcode, just as a bank would print it. The home page walks through the steps.
The statement is not tax advice. It turns existing figures into the format the tax office expects – no more, but no less.