Starting a Swiss job while living in France: your first 30 days

The first month of a Swiss job is loud. You are learning a new role and meeting new people, and in the background three separate administrative processes have started running, each on its own clock: the permit, the health-insurance choice and your tax route.

The aim this month is not to finish them — you cannot, most of them depend on other people. It is to start them in the right order and know who owns each one, so that nothing runs out while everybody assumes somebody else is handling it. We will walk the month stage by stage, and the first is simply getting your own facts into one place.

Collect the basics in a single folder before your first morning: signed contract, Swiss work address and canton, French home address, identity document, start date, agreed work percentage and whatever was agreed about telework. Add every employer email about the permit, payroll and the pension fund — those turn out to matter more than they look.

Then write down three dates, separately, because they are not the same date and they drive different procedures: your first working day, the day the permit process started, and the day your Swiss health-insurance obligation began.

One thing to be clear about before you start: calling something a "first 30 days" task is a way of organising your attention. It does not create a 30-day legal deadline, and the real deadlines below have their own clocks.

An EU/EFTA cross-border commuter normally lives in an EU/EFTA state, works for a Swiss employer, and returns to their home abroad every day or at least once a week. The G permit is the document that records that status, and how long it lasts follows the rules tied to your contract.

Your job this week is not to fill in the form. It is to ask three questions of your employer or the cantonal migration authority: who is submitting the application, what evidence is still missing, and how will the confirmation reach you? Then keep the submission receipt.

It is worth saying plainly, because the assumption is so common: a permit application is not health-insurance registration, and it is not evidence of your tax residence. Three separate processes, three separate proofs.

This is the one with a real clock on it. As a France resident starting Swiss work, you normally have three months to complete the choice between the Swiss LAMal route and an exemption into the French system.

Miss it and the choice stops being yours: if no valid decision reaches the competent Swiss authority in time, Swiss affiliation can simply be imposed. That is why this sits in the first ten days rather than the last ten.

Use the current France form and contact the health-insurance authority in the canton where you work. Before you sign anything, note down the facts that change the analysis: who else is in your household, what cover they already have, and any work you do in another country.

Compare both routes properly before choosing — this overview deliberately does not tell you which is better for your household. Review the current routes in the health-insurance comparison, then verify the premiums and the procedure that apply to you.

Everything here starts with the canton you work in. If you are privately employed in Vaud, Valais, Neuchâtel, Jura, Bern, Solothurn, Basel-Stadt or Basel-Landschaft, and you meet the frontier conditions — in essence, returning to your home in France in principle every day — your salary is generally taxed in France rather than Switzerland.

That route depends on one piece of paper actually arriving. The 2041-AS residence certificate has to reach your employer, or payroll will withhold Swiss tax regardless of which regime you believe you are in. Chase it in the first fortnight, not in month three.

In Geneva and the other cantons outside the eight-canton agreement, Swiss tax is generally withheld and that is simply the route. Either way — and this catches people out — a French tax resident still declares Swiss employment income in France.

Some patterns take you off the simple route: nights spent in Switzerland, public-sector employment, Swiss nationality, business travel or regular homeworking. If any apply, flag them now rather than after a year has been filed. The tax-residence check gathers the facts you will need when you confirm the route with the competent tax authority.

Ask HR to confirm four things in writing: your regular workplace, your homeworking percentage, how business travel is handled, and whether you need an A1 social-security certificate.

Be aware of what an approved homeworking policy does and does not do. Tax and social security count cross-border work under different rules, so one policy, however well drafted, does not settle both questions.

Payroll needs your correct French address, bank details and social-insurance information. While you are there, ask four questions of your own: when is the first salary paid, is the annual salary split into 12 or 13 payments, which pension plan applies, and where will the pension certificate arrive?

Before the payslip lands, use the Swiss salary estimate to save a set of assumptions you can review afterwards. It is a reference point to check the real payslip against, not a promise about it.

Make a short list with four columns: process, owner, proof, next date. Four rows will do — the G permit, the health-insurance choice, the tax route payroll is using, and whether the telework pattern has been assessed.

If you can fill in the owner and the proof for all four, your first month has done its job.

When the first payslip arrives, put it next to the contract and check that gross pay matches. Then find each line in turn: social insurance, pension, accident, tax. Save it, and ask payroll about anything you cannot account for — a first payslip is the right time to ask a naive question.

The aim at day 30 is not a perfect file. It is that no deadline is running silently, and no process is sitting there because everybody assumed somebody else owned it.