Individual Taxation: A Structural Disadvantage for Single Parents with Joint Custody

With the introduction of individual taxation, a long-overdue paradigm shift in the Swiss tax system is being promoted. Equality, incentives to participate in the workforce, and tax fairness are at the centre of political communication. What is largely overlooked, however, is the fact that for single parents with joint custody under the new divorce law, the system results in a significant structural increase in financial burden—particularly where the traditional childcare model continues to apply.

Joint Custody Does Not Mean Shared Childcare

A central flaw in the concept of individual taxation lies in equating joint custody with an equal division of childcare responsibilities. In practice, however, it is not custody rights that determine the actual childcare workload, but physical care and residence.

Where children live predominantly with one parent despite joint custody, they reside with that parent during the working week. This reality makes regular employment considerably more difficult. Jobs that can be carried out exclusively at weekends—precisely when the children are staying with the other parent—are, in practice, extremely rare.

In addition, there is the largely invisible but time-intensive work of everyday childcare: medical and dental appointments, school-related matters, educational support, as well as the organisation of holidays, leisure activities, and hobbies. For practical reasons, these responsibilities are predominantly handled by the parent with whom the children live. This form of care work is neither flexible nor delegable—yet it is largely ignored in the tax system.

Allimony Payments: Economically and Social Insufficient

A further structural disadvantage arises from the tax treatment of allimony payments. While the paying parent may deduct these payments from taxable income, the receiving parent must declare them as fully taxable income.

These payments neither compensate for the loss of income resulting from reduced employment nor adequately offset missing contributions to social security. Over the long term, this leads to gaps in pension entitlements. In practice, this risks primarily affects women, as they continue to perform the majority of childcare work.

Halved Child Deductions and the Abolition of the Family Tax Rate

The planned halving of child deductions under individual taxation further exacerbates this imbalance. Single parents who carry the main burden of childcare are confronted with a direct increase in their tax burden.

At the same time, the family tax rate is being abolished—an instrument that at least partially reflected the financial reality of single-parent households. The combined effect of these measures results in a noticeable deterioration in the situation of households that are already under financial pressure.

The frequently highlighted higher child deduction of CHF 12,000 appears attractive at first glance. In reality, however, the halving of the deduction leads to an effective reduction of around CHF 800—resulting in a further disadvantage for single parents with primary childcare responsibilities.

Cantons Bear a Central Responsibility

It is particularly problematic that not all cantons—unlike Zurich—consistently take childcare work into account on a truly equal basis in line with the new divorce law. As long as these cantonal frameworks are not harmonised and the actual childcare workload is not implemented in accordance with the new divorce legislation, individual taxation has a discriminatory effect on single parents who have primary care responsibility.

In reality, physical care and residence (custody in the day-to-day sense) is the decisive factor determining the actual childcare workload in a single parent’s daily life. If this is not adequately reflected, an additional systematic disadvantage arises.

The consequences are foreseeable: the additional burden will predominantly affect women, who are often already financially weakened by divorce and who carry the main share of unpaid care work. In such cases, “joint” parental authority remains a purely formal construct on paper—without meaningful tax recognition of the realities of everyday life.

Conclusion

Individual taxation fails to achieve its goal of tax fairness for single parents as long as the actual realities of childcare are not consistently taken into account. Before introducing new tax systems, both the federal government and the cantons must do their homework: care work must be realistically reflected, childcare models must be assessed in a differentiated manner, and structural disadvantages must be systematically avoided.

Otherwise, a reform project that promises equality risks becoming a fiscal stress test for those who already bear the greatest share of responsibility.