Working out your AHV contributions as a self-employed person

The first bill that genuinely catches out newly self-employed people doesn’t come from a supplier. It comes from the compensation office. As an employee you never paid the AHV yourself – your employer deducted half, added the other half, and your payslip carried a line nobody reads. On your own account you carry both halves, and you pay them yourself.

That’s no reason to worry, but it is a reason to do the arithmetic. The numbers are public, they’re unambiguous, and they’re below.

The AHV decides whether you are self-employed at all

One point first, because it often gets lost: “self-employed” is not a state you reach by deciding to. It is a status the compensation office grants you – and without that recognition you are not self-employed in social insurance terms, whatever your business card says.

Two practical consequences follow:

You need evidence before you register. The office wants to see that a business actually exists, typically on the basis of invoices issued to several different clients. That implies an order of operations most guides leave out: first you win two or three paying jobs, then you fill in forms. Starting the other way round means waiting empty-handed. The guide to the order of steps for starting a sole proprietorship shows where AHV registration fits in alongside the name check, the commercial register and VAT.

A single main client is a risk. If practically all your turnover comes from one client, you use their infrastructure, and you carry no entrepreneurial risk of your own, the office can refuse the status and classify the work as employment. Several clients are therefore not only healthier commercially – they are also the more stable basis for your registration.

And recognition is an assessment, not a click. Expect weeks between filing and decision. Plan for them rather than discovering them.

The numbers

Figures checked on 19 September 2026 against leaflet 2.02 of the AHV/IV information centre and the SVA’s published rates. Check them again in January – the amounts are adjusted periodically.

The scale is called “sliding” because the rate slides downwards, not upwards: earn little and you pay a lower percentage. From CHF 60,500 of income the full rate of 10.0 per cent applies throughout.

What that means in practice

Three examples, calculated on income after deducting business-related expenses:

• CHF 8,000 income: you pay the minimum contribution of CHF 530. As a percentage that is a lot – but it is owed even when your profit is small.
• CHF 40,000 income: you are in the middle of the sliding scale, and the rate sits between the two limits.
• CHF 90,000 income: 10.0 per cent, so CHF 9,000, plus administrative costs.

The administrative cost contribution is added on top of the contributions and differs from one compensation office to the next. It is not a large item, but it explains why the bill never matches your calculation exactly.

The minimum is owed even if you barely earn anything

This is the most expensive misconception in the whole subject. The CHF 530 is not tied to a minimum profit – it is the floor. Anyone who assumes a lean first year means no contributions doesn’t register, doesn’t pay, and ends up with a contribution gap. Gaps feed through to your pension later and can only be closed to a limited extent, and only retroactively for a few years.

There is one exception. For a purely secondary activity – you are employed alongside it – self-employed income of up to CHF 2,500 a year stays free of contributions, as long as you don’t ask for it to be assessed. That limit applies to secondary activity only. For anyone working on their own account as their main occupation there is no allowance at all.

Instalments and the bill that arrives later

You first pay provisional instalments, based on your own estimate of your current income. The final assessment only happens once the tax authority reports your actual income – and that takes time. If business goes better than estimated, a top-up bill arrives years later for a financial year you mentally closed long ago.

Hence the advice that cannot be repeated often enough: tell the office when your income is clearly above your estimate and have your instalments adjusted. It is less pleasant now and considerably more pleasant in two years.

Registering late: what it costs

Contributions are levied retroactively – the claim arises with the income, not with the invoice. Contributions paid late attract default interest of 5 per cent per year, regardless of fault and without any reminder having to be sent first. Putting registration off therefore doesn’t get cheaper just because nobody has been in touch.

What the AHV does not cover

This is not about recommendations, but about gaps you ought to know about before you need them:

• No unemployment insurance. The self-employed are not covered, and there is no substitute.
• No automatic second pillar. Without an employer there is no mandatory pension fund. Anyone who wants occupational provision has to arrange it deliberately.
• Accident insurance under the UVG is not compulsory for you. As an employee you were covered through it; as a self-employed person you are not automatically.
• Withdrawing pension fund capital to build up your own business requires the compensation office to confirm your self-employed status – another reason not to postpone registration.

How you close any of these gaps is a question for advice qualified to give it. That they exist, however, is not something you should find out when you need the cover.

How much should you set aside?

As a rule of thumb for the AHV: around 10 per cent of profit, put aside as you go, not hunted down at year end. On top of that come income taxes, because your profit is charged twice – once by the AHV and once by the tax office. How that fits together for tax purposes is covered in the article on the sole proprietorship tax return.

That provision only works if you know at any time what your profit currently is. Which takes bookkeeping that is kept up to date rather than reconstructed once a year – and a business account that isn’t mixed with your private one, because otherwise there is no way to tell what was profit in the first place.

Conclusion

For the self-employed the AHV isn’t a deduction somebody else handles, but an item you have to plan yourself: a floor of CHF 530, a rate rising to 10 per cent, a top-up bill that arrives with a delay, and gaps in unemployment, accident and second-pillar cover that nobody closes automatically.

What you can do about it is unspectacular and effective: register early, set money aside continuously, have your instalments corrected when business picks up. And it belongs in your prices – anyone whose hourly rate doesn’t carry the AHV share is funding it out of what should have been their income. With an overview of your numbers in Effizo you can see at any time what those 10 per cent apply to.