Säule 3a for the self-employed with no pension fund

An employee in a pension fund may pay a flat annual amount into Säule 3a. A self-employed person with no occupational pension has a larger ceiling instead, because the 3a account is carrying work a pension fund would otherwise do. That ceiling is not a fixed sum: it is a percentage of net earned income, with an absolute maximum above it.

So the limit moves with the year you had. A strong year raises it up to the maximum, a thin year lowers it, and for most sole proprietors it is the percentage rather than the maximum that binds.

Säule 3a (Pillar 3a)

Tied personal pension savings. A contribution is deducted from taxable income in the year it is paid.

2. Säule (BVG)

The occupational pension. A self-employed person without employees is not automatically in one.

Net earned income

What is left after business expenses. The profit figure, not turnover and not the amount invoiced.

Marginal rate

The rate that applies to the top franc of your income. It is what decides the worth of a deduction.

1. 1

   Book the year

   Revenue and expenses are recorded as they happen. The 3a base is the net profit that falls out of them - not turnover, and not the total you invoiced.

2. 2

   Take the percentage

   With no 2. Säule, 20 percent of that net earned income is the first candidate.

3. 3

   Take the ceiling

   CHF 36'288 for 2026 is the second candidate. It does not move with your income.

4. 4

   The lower of the two is your maximum

   Below the income at which 20 percent reaches the ceiling, the percentage is what limits you. Above it, the ceiling does.

5. 5

   With a 2. Säule, the flat cap applies instead

   CHF 7'258 for 2026, and never more than the income you actually had that year.

Solory does this on the annual Tax Report. The Säule 3a card reads the account's own booked revenue and expenses for the current year, computes the base and prints the maximum deductible contribution beside it, so the figure comes from your records rather than from a number you typed into a calculator.

Revenue is recognised on the day the money arrived, from the payment value date, not on the day the invoice was issued. An invoice paid in parts counts in each year it was actually paid in, and the MWST inside each part payment is split to the cent so the shares add back to the invoice's own tax.

MWST is never counted as revenue: every revenue, profit and tax figure uses the net amount, and gross is kept only where gross is the correct basis, such as the MWST registration threshold. Expenses can only carry CHF, so the cost side of the base is unambiguous.

A contribution is deductible in the year it is paid. The cutoff Solory prints is 31 December: money that reaches the 3a provider after it belongs to the next tax year, not the one you are closing.

• The 31 December cutoff is printed on the Säule 3a card itself.
• It is emitted into the calendar every year, on the same grid as MWST filing dates, invoice due dates and your own events.
• The statutory layer is read-only and marked as set by the authority. One click creates your own preparation event a chosen number of days earlier, which you can move or delete freely.

A 3a contribution is deducted from taxable income, so its worth is the contribution multiplied by your marginal rate, not by your average rate. The same payment is worth more to somebody in a high-rate commune than to somebody in a thin first year.

Solory shows the estimated saving using the marginal rate you enter yourself in settings. That rate defaults to zero, so the saving reads zero until you set it. The product holds no cantonal or communal tax tariffs and does not compute Swiss income tax: it applies the rate you give it and labels the result an estimate.

• A Säule 3a card on the annual Tax Report, computed from the current year's booked revenue and expenses.
• The 31 December cutoff as a yearly entry in the calendar, with your own preparation event one click away.
• Swiss calculators for MWST, AHV/IV/EO, BVG, FABI and Saldosteuersatz versus the effective method, each naming the data year it uses.
• A Swiss reference holding the dated 3a ceilings for 2024, 2025 and 2026, each with its authority, page link and reading date.
• Read-only access for your Treuhänder to invoices, expenses and the financial summary, on Professional and Business.

Canton-aware deadlines with in-app and email notices are a Professional and Business capability, and the reference content opens in stages, with the federal basics readable on the free plan. The plans are CHF 0, 15, 29 and 59 per month, stated without Swiss VAT.

• A loss year. If costs are above booked income there is no 3a base yet. The card says exactly that and prints the real measured figure rather than reporting the profit as zero.
• Foreign-currency invoices. Solory holds no exchange rates and will not guess one, so a year containing them gets an explanation instead of a ceiling.
• A year the figures do not cover. The 3a calculation carries 2026 as a single year, and the AHV, BVG and FABI calculators hold 2025 and 2026 only. A later year fails rather than extrapolating.

• It does not open, hold or move money in a 3a account. No bank or insurer is connected to it.
• It does not file anything. There is no submission to the ESTV, no transmission of a tax return to a cantonal office and no AHV declaration.
• It does not calculate Swiss income tax and holds no cantonal or communal tariffs, so it cannot tell you your marginal rate.
• It is not legal or tax advice, and it replaces neither a Treuhänder nor double-entry bookkeeping where that is required.
• The AI assistant drafts and asks for approval. It never sends an email or changes a record on its own.
• Accrual accounting exists only in the Year-End Income Statement. The 3a base, like the rest of the reporting, is cash basis.