Staff meals
Where a business feeds its staff free of charge or at a reduced price, the benefit is salary in kind; the Federal Tax Administration sets amounts per meal and per day for this, which belong on the payslip and in the AHV base.
Definition
The case affects practically every hospitality business and many care homes, building sites and canteens. The in-kind value is not paid out but payrolled: it raises the contributory salary without raising net pay — and appears on the salary certificate.
For VAT the same meal has to be looked at a second time: supplying it to staff counts as a supply and must be taxed. Whoever payrolls the in-kind salary correctly but forgets the VAT has done only half the job.
Where to read it
- Old-Age and Survivors’ Insurance Act (SR 831.10)
- Federal Act on Direct Federal Taxation (SR 642.11)
- Swiss Federal Tax Administration
What the software must be able to do
What is needed is a wage type that payrolls an in-kind value as contributory without paying it out, and that lands in the right field of the salary certificate — plus recording the same meals for VAT.
Checked Aug 2026
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