🇨🇠Retire abroad
Retire in Switzerland, priced from your own plan
Switzerland is the only European destination Runway models where selling your portfolio costs literally nothing in tax. The catch arrives yearly instead: a cantonal wealth tax on everything you hold, and living costs that out-Norway Norway.
What Runway models in Switzerland
- Private capital gains on securities untaxed: 0 percent on the sell
- A yearly cantonal and communal wealth tax, about 0.46 percent at the pack's Zurich-representative rate, with huge canton-to-canton variance
- Dividends and interest taxed as ordinary income
- Rents and daily costs priced in francs, one of the few destinations where the cost of living usually rises rather than falls
| Tax area | What Runway applies (2026) |
|---|---|
| Investment gains | None (private capital gains untaxed) |
| Rental income | Progressive (ordinary income) |
| Wealth tax | ~0.46% yearly (Zurich-representative) |
| Leaving home | Any exit tax your home country charges, priced into the move |
The move itself is part of the price
A move to Switzerland is never just Switzerland's tax rules. Leaving a country that charges an exit tax, Norway among them, can trigger a bill on unrealised gains as if you sold on the way out, and Runway prices that into the plan before a single CHF of spending is modelled. The mechanics are in what an exit tax costs when you leave, and the wider tooling question in which FIRE calculators handle a move abroad.
Once you are there, your spending runs in CHF through an exchange-rate scenario you control, so a weak krone decade is a plan you can stress, not a surprise.
Price the whole move, not the postcard
Runway prices a retirement in Switzerland end to end from your own plan: any exit tax on the way out, Switzerland's taxes on the drawdown, and your spending in local currency. Your freedom age is free.
Download free on the App StoreFrequently asked
What tax does Runway assume on investment gains in Switzerland?
Runway models the Swiss private-investor rule, no tax on securities gains at all, together with the yearly cantonal wealth tax, at a Zurich-representative rate of roughly half a percent. The figures are 2026, income-year-stamped, and refreshed as rules change.
Do I still pay an exit tax if I retire to Switzerland?
It depends where you leave from. Norway charges utflyttingsskatt on unrealised gains and several other home countries charge an exit tax of their own. Runway prices whichever one applies to you into every plan that retires to Switzerland, as a cost of the move, before the destination's own rules take over on the drawdown.
Which Swiss canton does Runway assume?
A Zurich-representative rate, stated openly in the pack manifest. Cantonal wealth and income taxes vary enormously, so treat the modelled figures as a solid middle case and refine by canton when a real move gets close.
Figures are 2026, income-year-stamped estimates from the Runway country pack for Switzerland, produced by the same engine the app runs. They are educational estimates, not financial or tax advice: rules change, and personal cases differ. See the full country list.