Top one percent holds 45.9 percent of taxable wealth
The share was almost unchanged in 2023. The original tables also show that more than half of taxpayers with unlimited liability had at most 50,000 francs.
In 2023 the top one percent held a total of 45.9 percent of taxable wealth in Switzerland. That is according to the communication published on 5 November 2026 by the Federal Tax Administration (ESTV). The share thus remained almost at the level of the two previous years. The new publication describes a strong concentration, but no new jump at the top.
Average taxable net wealth was around 459,000 francs. Adjusted for prices it was somewhat higher than in 2022, but still lower than in 2021. The figures refer to tax year 2023. They reflect neither today's balance nor how wealth has developed since then.
The average lies far above many tax cases
How little the mean says about a typical tax case is shown by the original table. Of the taxpayers with unlimited liability, around 21.7 percent fell into the zero wealth class and a further 30.8 percent into amounts of up to 50,000 francs. Together that was 52.6 percent, in other words more than half. The percentages are rounded.
For the same group the table reports around 2.406 trillion francs of net wealth and 5.238 million taxpayers. Dividing the two unrounded values yields the roughly 459,000 francs cited by the ESTV. A high average can therefore coexist with very many much smaller fortunes: the large holdings pull it upwards.
No precise median can be read from these classes. The median is the value below and above which half of the observations lie. The mean of 459,000 francs is therefore not a suitable yardstick for the claim that half of the taxpayers own at least that much.
Pension assets are missing, real estate appears at tax values
The statistics record assessed net wealth as of 31 December 2023: assets minus debts, before social deductions are applied. Taxpayers without net wealth are counted. If debts exceed assets, the case enters with zero. The zero class therefore does not distinguish between balanced wealth and over-indebtedness.
Occupational pension assets and claims from pillar 3a that are not yet due are not part of the recorded wealth. Household goods are missing as well. Anyone comparing their personal wealth statement, including retirement provision, with the table is therefore contrasting different quantities.
Land and real estate are recorded at cantonal tax values. These are not equivalent to an achievable sale price. The ESTV does not correct differing cantonal valuations for this statistic. The 45.9 percent share thus describes the distribution of wealth recorded for tax purposes, not a complete balance sheet of all private assets at market prices.
Residence and property can produce two entries
The cantons supply the ESTV with aggregated register data by wealth class. For taxpayers with unlimited liability, the wealth taxed at their canton of residence is recorded. Anyone owning a property or a permanent establishment elsewhere can additionally be subject to limited liability there. Persons resident abroad also appear with the portions of wealth taxed in the respective canton.
Adding up all entries across the cantons therefore does not necessarily count each person only once. Wealth is distributed among the competent cantons, while the same taxpayer can appear several times. For the average and the distribution, numerator and comparison group must match.
Since 2021 the ESTV has reported diverging developments in Basel-Stadt and Geneva: in the first canton concentration fell, in the second it rose. In most cantons it changed little. Why a share shifts cannot be established from these stock figures alone. That would require additional information, for example on wealth transfers, inward and outward migration, or valuations.
Wealth and federal tax are two different datasets
At the same time the ESTV publishes results on the direct federal tax of natural and legal persons for 2023. These concern income and corporate profits respectively. The wealth statistics, by contrast, are based on cantonal tax data. A wealth share of 45.9 percent is therefore neither an income share nor a group's share of federal tax revenue.
For smaller annual shifts the ESTV also warns of the limited accuracy of aggregated data. Its study published in March 2026 shows that such changes cannot be reliably detected with the Gini coefficient. A single, slightly changed indicator is therefore not enough to proclaim a new turning point.
Sources
- ESTV: Publication on direct federal tax and wealth distribution 2023, 5 November 2026
- ESTV: Wealth tax statistics 2023, original tables and introduction
- ESTV: Methodological fact sheet on wealth tax statistics
- ESTV: Suitability of the Gini coefficient, 26 March 2026
- ESTV: Statistics on the direct federal tax
- Cover image: Yogabrata Chakraborty / Billjones94, Swiss one-franc coins
- Cover image licence: CC BY-SA 4.0
- Article image: Zinneke, partial view of the Federal Palace in Bern
- Article image licence: CC BY-SA 3.0
