Training, medical costs and donations in VaudTax: special deductions

All these deductions are in the same VaudTax section.

Training and further education (code 618)

• Cap: CHF 12,000 per person per year.
• Conditions: hold an upper-secondary diploma (apprenticeship certificate, maturité, etc.) or be 20 or over and follow training other than a first upper-secondary diploma.
• Examples: federal professional diploma, CAS or MAS, job-related language course, career change, a bachelor's after an apprenticeship.
• Only costs you paid and that your employer did not reimburse, deductible in the year paid.

Medical and dental costs (code 710)

Add up the health costs you paid yourself during the year (deductible, co-payment, dentist, prescribed glasses and lenses, prescription medicines, physiotherapy, etc.) for you and your dependants. Only the part above 5% of your net income (code 700) is deductible.

Example: income at code 700 of CHF 70,000, 5% threshold = CHF 3,500. With CHF 5,200 of unreimbursed costs, the deduction is CHF 1,700.

Donations to charities (code 720)

• Total donations for the year must reach at least CHF 100.
• Cap: 20% of net income (code 700).
• Eligible: organisations based in Switzerland and tax-exempt for public-benefit purposes, plus the Confederation, cantons and communes.
• Not deductible: association membership fees, and donations to churches, parishes and religious institutions (Vaud rule).

Political party contributions (code 620)

Contributions and donations to a political party are deductible up to CHF 10,100 a year, if the party is on the federal party register, sits in a cantonal parliament or won at least 3% of votes in the last cantonal election.

This guide is for information only and is not personalised advice. Amounts come from official publications of the Vaud cantonal tax administration (ACI). VaudTax itself is in French: we quote the French labels so you can find them on screen. If in doubt, the official ACI instructions prevail.