Geneva, Vaud or Ticino: choosing where to settle

There is no canton that is cheapest on every count. On the federal tax administration's own estimates, Lugano is the lightest of the three cities on income tax and wealth tax at every level we queried. Geneva city sits below Lausanne on income tax up to CHF 1'000'000 of income, and Lausanne slips just under Geneva at CHF 3'000'000. Those numbers leave out the cantonal tax shields and the Vaud tax cut voted in September, they say nothing about inheritance, and they are only the start of a choice that turns on your income, your wealth, your family and where you will actually live. This page sets out what we can show, and says plainly where our data runs out.

How these figures were obtained, and what they leave out

Every income-tax and wealth-tax figure on this page is an estimate, produced by the Swiss federal tax administration's official calculator and queried on 1 November 2026 for tax year 2026. The profile is a single filer with no children, no church tax and income of the "other" kind, with federal, cantonal and municipal tax added together. These are not quotes, and they are not what you would be assessed on. They are a way to compare three places on identical assumptions.

The calculator applies no tax shield. Each of the three cantons caps the combined income and wealth tax in certain situations, and for a person with substantial assets and modest income that cap can be the decisive number. We explain the three mechanisms further down; the point to hold now is that a table without them is a ceiling for the wealth tax, not a forecast.

A second reserve applies to Vaud. On 27 September 2026 Vaud voters accepted, with 53.1% of the vote, the initiative "Baisse d'impôts pour tous", a 12% reduction of cantonal income tax and wealth tax for individuals. The canton's own announcement says "from next year", the press says the 2027 tax period, and the exact date is to be confirmed. The Vaud figures in this page do not include that reduction, and wherever they appear we say so.

Finally, a canton is never chosen on a table alone. Taxes are one line among several, the lines move with your situation, and a few of them (inheritance above all) can outweigh the others. Where we hold no verified figure, we leave the gap visible rather than fill it.

Income tax, side by side: Geneva, Lausanne and Lugano

The table gives estimated total tax, in Swiss francs, with the effective rate in brackets. Geneva is represented by Geneva city, Vaud by Lausanne and Ticino by Lugano. The Lausanne column is before the 12% Vaud reduction, and no column includes a tax shield.

Estimates from the federal tax administration's calculator, tax year 2026, queried on 1 November 2026. Single filer, no children, no church tax, no tax shield applied. Not a quote. Lausanne figures exclude the Vaud 12% reduction voted on 27 September 2026.

What does the spread mean? At CHF 200'000 the three cities are within a few thousand francs of each other: by our own subtraction, Lausanne costs CHF 4'428 more than Geneva city and Lugano CHF 5'566 less. At CHF 500'000 the gap widens to CHF 17'270 between Lausanne and Geneva, and CHF 19'928 between Geneva and Lugano. At CHF 1'000'000 Geneva and Lausanne are CHF 9'707 apart, while Lugano is CHF 53'591 below Geneva.

The top of the range is the interesting part. At CHF 3'000'000 the order between Geneva and Lausanne reverses: Geneva city is CHF 24'937 above Lausanne (our arithmetic on the two figures), and Lugano is CHF 192'635 below Geneva. The reason is structural: the effective rate keeps climbing in Geneva, to 42.3%, while Lausanne has almost levelled off at 41.4%. Federal tax tops out at 11.5% for a single person above CHF 794'000, so most of the difference at this level comes from the cantonal and municipal layers, not from Bern.

The commune also matters inside a canton. At CHF 1'000'000, Cologny comes out at CHF 370'036 (37.0%) against CHF 403'615 in Geneva city, and Collina d'Oro in Ticino at CHF 327'424 (32.7%) against CHF 350'024 in Lugano. Pully and Montreux give the same result as Lausanne. For a married couple the estimates at CHF 500'000 are CHF 163'780 in Geneva city, CHF 180'600 in Lausanne and CHF 158'589 in Lugano, and at CHF 1'000'000 they are CHF 376'734, CHF 411'298 and CHF 349'846. As elsewhere on this page, the Vaud figures are before the 12% reduction.

If your income comes mainly from a Swiss company, the structure of your holding matters as much as the canton; our page on transferring a company or holding to Switzerland covers it. And if the move is driven by the Italian exit tax, the exit tax calculator will tell you what is at stake before you weigh cantons against each other.

Wealth tax: where the cantons really differ

On wealth, the gap between Ticino and the other two is larger than on income. The table gives the effective rate in per mille of net wealth, from the same calculator and under the same conditions, with the same Vaud reserve.

Estimates from the federal tax administration's calculator, tax year 2026, queried on 1 November 2026, wealth only. Single filer, no children, no church tax, no tax shield applied: these are maxima before any cap. Not a quote. Lausanne figures exclude the Vaud 12% reduction voted on 27 September 2026.

Ticino's rate stops rising at 4.42 per mille, whereas Geneva keeps climbing to 8.47 at CHF 50 million. Lausanne starts higher than Geneva at CHF 1 million (6.39 against 4.55) and ends lower from CHF 10 million upwards. At CHF 10 million, other communes show the commune effect again: 7.28 in Cologny, 7.18 in Pully, 7.31 in Montreux and 4.00 in Collina d'Oro.

The three cantonal tax shields, and why a table overstates the bill

Each canton has a mechanism that limits the combined burden. They are different in design, and the table above applies none of them.

• Geneva (article 60 of the cantonal income tax law). Income tax and wealth tax together, centimes included, are capped at 60% of net taxable income, with the net return on wealth fixed at no less than 1% of net wealth. The reduction is applied against the wealth tax. The 2026 wealth deduction for a single taxpayer is CHF 87'872.
• Vaud (article 8 of the law on communal taxes). The cap is 30% for income and 10 per mille for wealth, and 60% of combined net income, with the net return on wealth taken at no less than 1% in 2026. After the cap the wealth tax cannot fall below 3 per mille. The maximum base rate in the 2026 wealth scale (article 59 of the tax law) is 3.39 per mille. All of this precedes the 12% reduction voted in September.
• Ticino (article 49a of the tax law). On request, tax is reduced to 60% of taxable income, with a net return of at least 1%. The wealth scale in article 49 runs from 1 per mille up to CHF 200'000, rises in steps to 3 per mille, and is 2.5 per mille above CHF 1'381'000, with a cantonal coefficient of 100%.

The reason a table without these overstates the bill is simple. Take a rentier with a large estate and a modest income, which is a common profile for a newcomer. Wealth tax is levied on assets, whether or not they yield anything, so the table charges the full per-mille rate. A shield then looks at what the whole tax burden represents against income, with a deemed minimum return, and cuts it down. The more asset-rich and income-poor you are, the further the real number can sit below the table. For an entrepreneur whose income is large relative to wealth, the shield bites much less and the table is closer to the truth.

Expenditure-based taxation: the cantonal minima

If you will not work in Switzerland, you may be able to ask to be taxed on your living expenditure instead of your income and wealth. Our page on lump-sum taxation in Switzerland sets out the conditions. Here we only compare the floors on the amount of expenditure on which tax is calculated. These are minimum bases of taxable expenditure, not the tax you would pay, and we publish no minimum tax in francs for any canton, because it depends on the scale applied to that base and on local surcharges.

• Federal level: CHF 435'500 for 2026 and CHF 437'000 for 2027.
• Geneva: a cantonal base of CHF 400'000, indexed, giving CHF 426'357 for 2026, or CHF 468'993 once the 10% surcharge in the canton's table is added. The base covers income and wealth, with a rule of seven times the annual rent or rental value.
• Vaud: CHF 415'000, with the 15% wealth surcharge already included. The Vaud rule is seven times the rent plus 10%. Whether the 12% reduction voted in September affects this base is not established here, and the figure is quoted before it.
• Ticino: CHF 434'700, indexed, from the 2025 tax period. Wealth is deemed to be five times the expenditure base.

The three are not like for like. Vaud's figure already contains a surcharge that Geneva shows separately, and Ticino's wealth assumption works differently again, so the lowest figure in the list is not necessarily the lowest bill. Some cantons have abolished the regime altogether: Zurich (from 1 January 2010), Schaffhausen, Appenzell Outer Rhodes, Basel-Landschaft and Basel-Stadt. Geneva, Vaud and Ticino all still apply it.

Inheritance, which may outweigh income tax

For a family with a large estate, the canton's inheritance rules can be worth more than a few points of income tax, and here Geneva and Vaud do not work the same way.

Geneva exempts the surviving spouse and direct-line relatives from inheritance duty. There is one exception that matters directly to this page: the exemption does not apply if, in one of the last three final tax assessments before death, the deceased was taxed on an expenditure basis. In that case the heirs fall under the first-category scale, which starts at 2% from CHF 5'001 and rises by brackets to 6% above CHF 500'000 for children, parents and spouse, with no additional cantonal surcharge. For grandchildren and grandparents the scale is 20% higher, which brings the top rate to 7.2%, and for other descendants and ascendants it is 30% higher. There is a base exemption of CHF 5'000 per heir, and the same exemption and the same exception apply to gifts. In short, "Geneva exempts the direct line" is true only if you are not taxed on expenditure.

Vaud works the other way round. The surviving spouse or registered partner is exempt, but descendants are taxed, with a deduction of CHF 1'000'000 per hereditary branch of the first degree of kinship, which reduces by 1/100 for every CHF 1'000 above CHF 1'001'000 (for estates opened since 1 January 2025). Gifts to children are exempt up to CHF 300'000 per child per calendar year; above that, the whole amount is taxable. We found no expenditure-based exception in the Vaud law, which is the opposite of Geneva's position.

We publish no Vaud inheritance rate. The only rate schedule we could find is a PDF dated 2017, and we will not put a current-looking number on an old document. We also have no verified Ticino inheritance comparison, so for the third option the question is open. Note that there is no inheritance treaty between Italy and Switzerland, and that Vaud's halving rule for foreign heirs raises a question that remains open for an Italian taxed on expenditure; it is something to examine, not something to count on.

Living there: rents, insurance, schools and travel

Rents. The only official rent statistic we hold is Geneva's. In the cantonal statistics office's 2024 figures for the housing stock (free-market rents, charges excluded), average rents run from CHF 2'596 down to CHF 1'343 a month across the dwelling-size classes, and from CHF 2'880 down to CHF 1'526 for dwellings re-let in 2023 and 2024. Another set of figures looks at five-room dwellings: CHF 2'351 where the tenant has held the lease for under three years, CHF 1'535 for over twenty. Annual variation is +1.7%. These are averages of the existing housing stock, not high-end rents, and they say little about what a family looking for a house will pay today. We found no equivalent official statistic for Lausanne or Lugano, so we publish no rent for either.

Health insurance. Federal Office of Public Health average monthly premiums, all ages, are CHF 487.20 in Geneva for 2026 and CHF 508.60 for 2027; CHF 439.30 in Vaud for 2026 and CHF 454.50 for 2027; and CHF 392.40 for Switzerland for 2026 and CHF 412.00 for 2027. These are population averages, not an adult quote.

Schools. Ecolint's published annual tuition for 2026-27 runs from CHF 20'000 for the light pre-reception programme and CHF 23'000 for the regular one, CHF 24'000 in Reception, CHF 28'160 in classes 1 to 4, CHF 29'550 in classes 5 and 6, CHF 33'560 in classes 7 to 9, CHF 35'290 in classes 10 and 11, and CHF 36'540 in classes 12 and 13. On top come a CHF 250 application fee per child, CHF 2'500 for registration of new pupils, a CHF 4'000 Capital Development Fund payment made once, and a CHF 1'000 re-enrolment deposit. Le Rosey's boarding fee for 2025-26 is CHF 154'200 a year for Cadets and Seniors, with CHF 3'000 for registration; Juniors are CHF 103'500, and day pupils are admitted only in classes 7 to 9 at CHF 56'100. We do not cost other schools, because we have not read their official fee schedules and will not quote third-party figures.

For Italian-language schooling, the Italian embassy's list of January 2026 shows no school in Geneva itself. In Vaud it names a paritary scientific lyceum, the Liceo "Vilfredo Pareto" in Lausanne, and an Italo-Swiss section at the École Catholique du Valentin. In Lugano it names the Istituto Elvetico and the Istituto Leonardo da Vinci.

Getting to Milan. The official SBB journey from Geneva to Milan takes 4 hours 23 minutes, with four direct EuroCity trains a day. From Lugano the figure we have, about 1 hour 17 minutes, comes from the press rather than an official source and should be treated as indicative.

How the choice is actually made

Taken together, the data narrows the question without closing it. Ticino is lighter on income tax and wealth tax in the examples above, but the same data says nothing about its inheritance rules, its rents or its schools. Between Geneva and Lausanne the income-tax gap is modest below CHF 1'000'000 and shifts at the top of the range. Geneva's inheritance rule hinges on whether you opt for the expenditure-based regime. Vaud's reduction should shift the comparison, but its size on your file has not yet been calculated.

Ark Fiduciaire has offices in Geneva and Lausanne. We run these figures on your real file: your income and its sources, the composition of your wealth, your family, your inheritance horizon and where you will actually spend your days. Where the legal analysis calls for it (inheritance, a lump-sum request, the structure of a holding), we work with the tax lawyers of PBM Avocats. The canton is chosen on those five things, not on a table; our estimates here are a way to frame the discussion.

Your permit is a separate step with its own timing, covered in our guide to the Swiss residence permit. If you want the canton question settled on your own numbers, you can request an analysis.