Mileage log requirements in Switzerland

What your records have to contain to survive a check by the Swiss tax authorities, and the rate DriveHub applies.

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Updated 5 Oct 2026

Country

The rate

CHF 0.75 per km

In force from 1 January 2026.

Who sets the rule

No federal logbook rule. The cantonal Steuerämter set practice by Weisung, and an employer's Spesenreglement is approved cantonally. Zürich's ZStB 17.1 is the Weisung the rate here is read from, and it is not a pattern the others follow: six cantons publish a per-kilometre figure for the self-employed, and most of the others want the car's actual costs split by a logbook, or a flat private share of 0,9 % of its price a month.

What every trip has to record

The Bordbuch itself is required: for a privately-held car used for business, ZStB 17.1 says the business kilometres "sind … mittels Bordbuch nachzuweisen". The Weisung names no fields, and no canton publishes a field list for this case — the only published list, FAQ zum Lohnausweis Ziff. 2.2.8, belongs to the company car and asks per trip for the date, the kilometres and the person visited with their place. A Bordbuch that has to prove which kilometres were business therefore needs each business trip with its date, its distance and what made it business. DriveHub asks a self-employed filer's own car for no Swiss field, and asks a company car for the person visited with their place, not a purpose (TripRequirements.requirements, LogbookRegime.requiresStatedPurpose).

Prefer to keep it by hand? A blank log with these fields: CSV · PDF.

How long to keep them

Ten years, and among the 21 countries on this site Switzerland is the only one whose tax statute says so directly: 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) — the only European country on this site drafted that way, and it diverges for anyone whose Geschäftsjahr is not the calendar year. An employee has no statutory period at all: Art. 126 Abs. 3 names only the self-employed and legal persons, so their horizon is the ten-year Nachsteuer window (Art. 152 Abs. 1), which lands on the same number by a different road. Electronic storage is allowed where the record stays consistent with the transactions and can be made legible at any time (Abs. 3), with the detail delegated to the GeBüV, SR 221.431. Losing the Bordbuch costs more than the deduction: the assessment moves to pflichtgemässes Ermessen (Art. 130 Abs. 2) and can then only be challenged for offensichtliche Unrichtigkeit (Art. 132 Abs. 3).

What it costs to get wrong

The business share is refused, or estimated against the taxpayer.

Where this comes from

The requirements above are quoted from the Swiss tax authorities. DriveHub re-checks these, and the rate, against the authority's own pages; this page is built from that record.

DriveHub records this automatically. It tracks each drive in the background and keeps the start and end, the distance and the route. Tracking and the missing-drive check are free; the report in the shape a tax office expects is part of DriveHub Pro.