Country guide · Switzerland

Almost every canton publishes a 70 or 75 Rappen figure — and in most of them it is not yours

No federal rule, twenty-six cantonal practices

No Swiss statute or ordinance prescribes a mileage log. Fahrtenbuch and Bordbuch occur zero times in the DBG, the Berufskostenverordnung, the MWSTG, the MWSTV and the OR. What exists is cantonal practice, set by Weisung, plus an employer's Spesenreglement approved by the canton — and Zürich's ZStB 17.1 is the shape most of the others follow.

That is not the relief it sounds like. It means the answer to "what must I record" is a cantonal document, and the answer to "at what rate" is a different cantonal document that frequently is not about you.

Who owns the car decides, not which method you would prefer

• Car held as a business asset. A flat Privatanteil of 0,9 % of the purchase price per month — 10,8 % a year — applies "unabhängig von der Anzahl der effektiv gefahrenen Privatkilometer". No logbook is needed, and no logbook can displace the flat rate. Keeping a meticulous Bordbuch to argue the private share down does not work here.
• Privately-held car used for business by a self-employed person. Zürich's Weisung of 3 February 2026: "so sind die geschäftlich zurückgelegten Kilometer mittels Bordbuch nachzuweisen. Der im Aufwand für geschäftlich zurückgelegte Kilometer zu verbuchende Kilometeransatz beträgt 75 Rappen." This is the case a mileage record is for.

So the first question is not which method saves more. It is which side of the Privatvermögen / Geschäftsvermögen line the car is on, because that decides whether a record changes the number at all.

The figure you found is probably not your figure

All twenty-six cantons were read at their own tax authorities' texts. Six publish a per-kilometre figure a self-employed filer may book — ZH 0.75, LU 0.75, SO 0.70, BL 0.70 rising to 0.75 in 2026, SH max. 0.70, NE 0.70. Fifteen publish a positive alternative instead: actual costs apportioned by Fahrtenbuch, or the 0,9 % a month. The rest publish neither, and leave the amount to the assessor.

And almost every canton publishes some 0.70 or 0.75 per kilometre. In nearly all of them it is the employee's home-to-work deduction, or a ceiling in an employer's Spesenreglement — a structurally different rule that happens to carry a similar number.

There is a tell. A commute scale is usually tiered and a business figure is flat: Vaud runs 0.70 falling to 0.35 past 15 000 km, Appenzell Innerrhoden seven steps from 0.70 down to 0.38, Thurgau 0.60/0.50/0.40. If the number you found comes with a taper, you have most likely found the wrong rule.

The federal 0.75 that arrived on 1 January 2026 is in the Berufskostenverordnung's Anhang and is a commute deduction: gated on public transport being unavailable or "objektiv nicht zumutbar", and capped by DBG Art. 26 at CHF 3 300, which binds after about 4 400 km. Only ZH, LU and BL carry that figure into a self-employed filer's business expense in their own text.

What goes in the Bordbuch

The Weisung enumerates no fields. Cantonal practice asks for a lückenlose record with the date, the purpose and the kilometres of each trip.

The one place Switzerland does prescribe a list is the company-car regime, in the FAQ zum Lohnausweis Ziff. 2.2.8, marked "Zwingende Angaben" — and it is an instructive list, because it is not the one people expect:

• The driver, and the calendar year
• The odometer at 1.1. and at 31.12. — and no per-trip reading at all
• Per trip: the date, the number of kilometres, and "Angabe der besuchten Person, inkl. Ortsangabe"

Who was visited, with a place. Not a purpose. And an unlabelled day is not a blank — "da bei Fehlen einer Angabe eine Privatfahrt anzunehmen ist", an unexplained day is read as private.

Ten years, counted from the business year

DBG Art. 126 Abs. 3 binds a self-employed filer's Belege for ten years and routes the manner to OR Art. 957–958f. The clock is the business year, not the calendar year (OR Art. 958f Abs. 1) — which diverges for anyone whose Geschäftsjahr is not the calendar year, and Switzerland is the only European country here drafted that way.

An employee has no statutory period: Art. 126 Abs. 3 names only the self-employed and legal persons, so their horizon is the ten-year Nachsteuer window of Art. 152. Losing the Bordbuch costs more than the deduction — the assessment moves to pflichtgemässes Ermessen under Art. 130 Abs. 2, and can then be challenged only for offensichtliche Unrichtigkeit.

Why an app rather than a notebook

Nothing above requires software; lückenlos is a property of the record, not of the tool. What software changes is where the gap appears. The kilometres are never what goes missing. What goes missing is the week in July nobody wrote anything down for — and a Bordbuch with a hole in it is precisely the document that invites an assessment nach Ermessen.

DriveHub records every drive in the background and asks afterwards which were business, so the gaps you have to explain are the days the car did not move rather than the days you forgot. The report prints the date, both addresses, the distance and your own note per trip, and where a car is used for business it can also carry the odometer at each end of the year — the two readings the company-car list asks for.

This page states what the cantonal Weisungen and the federal ordinance say, and names them so you can check. It is not tax advice. It can't account for your circumstances, and in Switzerland your canton is part of your circumstances. Where money is involved, ask your Treuhänder — and bring the Bordbuch.