CONVINUS Global Mobility Alert - Week 12.2024

BEST PRACTICE
CROSS-BORDER COMMUTERS OR
INTERNATIONAL WEEKLY RESIDENTS IN
SWITZERLAND – WHICH REGULATIONS
APPLY?
FRIEDERIKE RUCH, CONVINUS
In practice, one is often faced with the question of whether people who are employed in
Switzerland but reside abroad are cross-border commuters or international weekly residents.
Depending on this, different regulations sometimes apply. The distinction between real and fake
cross-border commuters is also often mentioned in this context.
What does this mean from a tax perspective?
A cross-border commuter is, in the truest sense, an employee who is employed in a country but does
not live in that country. But lives in a neighboring country and commutes to his place of work every
day. Depending on the existing double taxation agreement, it is possible to claim a certain number
of days on which the person can spend the night in the country of work without being denied crossborder
commuter status. If the number of these overnight stays is exceeded or if the person does
not commute every day or lives outside the relevant distance between home and work, one speaks
of a false cross-border commuter.
An international weekly resident is a person who is employed in a country and who also has their
main residence not in this country but in another country, but who stays in the country of
employment from Monday to Friday during the week and rents an apartment there.
The above-mentioned distinction is based on the tax perspective; the other areas of law (including
licensing and social security law) do not follow this distinction in the same way.
Situation
Lars van der Varten lives with his partner and their two children in Hamburg (Germany). He is a
Dutch citizen. Lars works at Swiss Pharma AG in Zug (Switzerland). His total annual compensation is
CHF 240,000. His employer keeps trying to convince him that he should move to Switzerland with his
family. His partner works as a lawyer in a German law firm in Hamburg and does not want to give up
her job there. For this reason, moving to Switzerland is out of the question.
Lars and his partner bought a house in Hamburg two years ago for EUR 3 million, which they own
equally. The house is rented, and the rental income generated is EUR 120,000 annually.
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