MWST-Abrechnung easy was the FTA's free online tool for the Swiss VAT (MWST) return. It was aimed at small businesses: sole proprietorships, part-time self-employed people and associations with simple bookkeeping. Instead of filling in a form or paying a fiduciary (Treuhand) office, you logged in on the FTA website, transferred the revenue and input tax figures from your own bookkeeping into a few input fields – and submitted the return electronically right away.
The appeal of easy lay in its simplicity. No software installation, no costs, no subscription trap. If you issued three invoices a month, easy got you sorted quickly. The return was done in half an hour, and the FTA's confirmation arrived by email.
But exactly this simplicity had a catch that many easy users felt sooner or later: easy filed the return, nothing more. The tool knew nothing about your invoices, your clients, your incoming payments or your reminders. The actual work – sorting receipts, adding up revenues, checking input tax – stayed entirely with you. easy was the last five-percent slice of a process whose first 95 percent account for all the effort.
The official reason: heightened security requirements. The FTA took MWST-Abrechnung easy offline as of May 2026 because the tool no longer meets current security standards. This is not a Swiss one-off – government portals all over Europe are upgrading their login and data transmission systems, and older services that cannot be retrofitted economically get cut. The details on the procedure and the deadlines are available directly from the FTA.
What does this mean concretely for you? First: easy is not "temporarily offline", it is permanently discontinued. Anyone who tries to log in as usual in autumn 2026 lands on a farewell page pointing to the successor. Second: the shutdown changes nothing about VAT liability itself. If you are above the revenue threshold, you still have to file returns – just with a different tool.
Third, and this is the good news: there is a direct successor. "MWST-Abrechnung pro" takes over easy's function, but runs via the citizen and administration portal myESTV. The switch is free. The FTA informed easy users by letter and email – anyone who ignored the mail should catch up on that now, before the next filing deadline runs.
Here is how to make the move in four steps:
1. Create a myESTV account. If you do not have one yet: on myESTV you register with your personal details and choose one of the available identification methods. Anyone who already has a myESTV account – for the tax return or the QR tax return, for example – can keep using it directly.
2. Link your company profile. In myESTV you add your UID or MWST number. The system checks the assignment, after which your taxable company appears in your profile.
3. Open MWST-Abrechnung pro. In the portal you find the tool under the VAT services. The input form resembles what you know from easy: revenues by tax rate, deductible input tax, a credit or payment due at the end.
4. Submit your first return. After submitting electronically you receive the confirmation of receipt by email as usual – the procedure has not fundamentally changed compared with easy.
A word on the deadline: it stays unchanged. The VAT return has to be filed periodically – monthly, quarterly or annually, depending on the ruling in your FTA decision. The filing deadline is generally 60 days after the end of the tax period. Late submission risks a default surcharge that grows with the length of the delay. Anyone who uses the shutdown of easy as an excuse pays for it.
Who is pro worth it for? For everyone who used easy and just wants to file: small sole proprietorships with few transactions, associations, part-time self-employed people. For everyone else – and that is the real point of this article – it pays to look beyond.
One more note for the transition: anyone who had an open return just before the shutdown should check whether it was actually transmitted. The FTA made sure running procedures did not go nowhere, but with tax authorities personal responsibility is always the safest strategy. A call to the FTA's VAT hotline costs nothing and clears things up in five minutes. And if you want to know how much time your clients actually have to pay – and from when reminders make sense – the article on payment terms in Switzerland is worth a read.
Here is where it gets honest. MWST-Abrechnung pro is a filing tool. It fills numbers into a form the FTA understands. It is not an invoicing program, not a bookkeeping system and not client management. The limits show up in daily work:
- No QR-bills. Pro does not create invoices. If you still manually stitch together Word templates and payment slips, you pay for it – in the worst case in postage, reminder effort and lost time. The Swiss payment standard has run exclusively over the QR payment part since 2022; the technical details of the standard are at PaymentStandards.ch. How to create a correct QR-bill in minutes is shown in the guide on creating a QR-bill.
- No automation. Every figure has to be read from your bookkeeping and typed in yourself. Typos in the input tax then land at the FTA unchecked.
- No receipt management. In a VAT audit you have to be able to produce every single receipt. Pro does not help you one bit with that.
- No payment reminders. Unpaid invoices remain your problem. Pro does not know your receivables.
An example from practice: Marco, a carpenter from Thurgau, filed his VAT with easy for years. His revenue: around CHF 85,000.00 a year. His bookkeeping: an Excel sheet he maintained every Sunday evening – three hours a week, every week, 52 weeks a year. When easy was shut down, he used the moment to rethink things fundamentally. Today he does his return in Magic Heidi in half an hour per quarter – and has QR-bills, automatic reminders for overdue invoices and a clean receipt archive on the side, which convinces any authority in an audit.
And another case that shows the limit of the FTA tools: Daniel, an IT consultant from Zurich, CHF 130,000.00 in revenue, VAT-registered for three years. He never used easy – he delegated everything to his fiduciary office and paid CHF 2,400.00 a year for that, exclusively for the VAT return. He still wrote the invoices himself, in Word, with wrongly formatted payment terms and no automatic reminders. After switching to Magic Heidi (CHF 39.00 per month on the largest plan) he does the return himself again, and the fiduciary office only does spot checks. His verdict after a year: no more lost invoices, payments arriving on average eleven days faster, and annual admin costs down by around CHF 1,900.00. Anyone unsure what a fiduciary costs at all and when they are worth it finds an honest breakdown in the article on fiduciary costs in Switzerland.
The maths is simple: three hours a week is around 150 hours a year. Even at a modest CHF 60.00 hourly rate, the Excel sheet costs him CHF 9,000.00 a year. Software that costs CHF 25.00 per month adds up to CHF 300.00. The difference is not a detail, it is an order of magnitude.
Not everyone needs software. But the rule of thumb is simple: as soon as you issue more than a handful of invoices per month, or client management and the VAT return drift apart, a lean solution pays off quickly.
The price question resolves into three categories:
- Free (FTA tools): MWST-Abrechnung pro via myESTV costs nothing. But invoices, receipts and reminders remain manual work.
- Lean software (CHF 25.00–39.00/month): Magic Heidi covers QR-bills, client management, payment reminders, receipt storage and VAT evaluations – making it the cheaper option for freelancers and small businesses. The exact breakdown of the plans is on the pricing page.
- Business software (CHF 52.00+/month): bexio starts at CHF 52.00 on a monthly subscription. Strong on stock management, payroll and larger teams – often overkill for a sole proprietorship without staff. A direct comparison of the two approaches is in the overview of the bexio alternative for freelancers.
Another example: Lena, a graphic designer from Bern, revenue CHF 48,000.00. After the easy shutdown she first carried on with MWST-Abrechnung pro – and after two quarters realised she was still spending three evenings per quarter copying numbers together. The switch to Magic Heidi took those evenings away completely: invoices are created directly with the correct VAT rate of 8.1%, the figures for the return are ready as a summary at the end of the quarter, and she only has to transfer them into pro – or submit them via her fiduciary.
What you should avoid in any case: running invoicing and the VAT return in two separate worlds. Anyone who writes invoices in one tool, collects receipts in a folder and clicks the return together in a third system has three places where errors can creep in. One system that knows everything eliminates exactly that source of error.
Regardless of the tool, the rules that applied to easy still apply:
Who has to file? Anyone generating domestic revenue above CHF 100,000.00 becomes VAT-liable by law (Art. 26 MWSTV governs the invoice requirements among other things; the revenue threshold and exemptions are in the MWSTG and in the FTA's guidance). Below the threshold you can register voluntarily – that pays off if your clients are mostly businesses and you want to claim input tax on investments.
What belongs on an invoice? The mandatory details stay the same – the article on VAT for freelancers covers all the points in detail. For the return itself what counts is: revenues separated by tax rate (8.1% standard rate, 3.8% accommodation, 2.6% reduced), deductible input tax, and the balance at the end.
How often do you file? Monthly, quarterly or annually, depending on the FTA's decision. Small businesses with manageable revenue usually file annually or quarterly. The deadline stays 60 days after the end of the period.
What changed with 2024? The standard rate has been 8.1% since 2024. Anyone still calculating with 7.7% in their bookkeeping produces systematically wrong returns. Check that before you submit the next period.
By the way: if you have just gone self-employed on the side and are still below the threshold, the guide on becoming self-employed part-time in Switzerland is worth a read. There I explain the revenue threshold in detail and when voluntary registration pays off.
The shutdown of MWST-Abrechnung easy is annoying, but not a drama. The successor pro via myESTV is free, the switch is done in an hour, and the filing modalities have not changed. If you just want to file, you are well served with it.
The real occasion to reflect is a different one: easy was never more than a filing tool. Anyone who uses the shutdown as an opportunity to manage invoicing, receipts and VAT (MWST) from one hand saves time and nerves every month. Magic Heidi costs between CHF 25.00 and CHF 39.00 per month, creates Swiss QR-bills with the correct VAT rate, reminds you of overdue payments and hands you the figures for the return on a plate at the end of the period. You can try it directly on the invoicing software page.
Three steps I recommend right now: create your myESTV account and test MWST-Abrechnung pro with the next period. In parallel, check how much time you lose each month on manual invoice management. And work out whether the tool that takes that work off your hands pays for itself after just a few invoices.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions about MWST-Abrechnung easy and pro
Can I still use MWST-Abrechnung easy in 2026?
No. The FTA retired MWST-Abrechnung easy as of May 2026 because of heightened security requirements. Former users have to switch to MWST-Abrechnung pro via myESTV. The return itself remains free of charge.
Is MWST-Abrechnung pro free?
Yes. Like easy, pro is also a free FTA tool. You only need a myESTV user account. Costs arise only if you have the return done by a fiduciary or a software solution.
What does VAT software cost?
Lean solutions like Magic Heidi cost CHF 25.00 to CHF 39.00 per month. bexio starts at CHF 52.00 on a monthly subscription. The FTA tools are free, but they do not handle invoicing, payment reminders or receipt management.
Do I have to submit the VAT return electronically?
Yes. The FTA expects the return electronically via myESTV; since easy was discontinued, the online route is the standard. Alternatively, a fiduciary can submit the return for you. The deadline stays 60 days after the end of the tax period.
Who has to file a VAT return? What does the CHF 100,000 threshold mean?
Anyone generating more than CHF 100,000.00 in domestic revenue per year becomes VAT-liable by law. Below the threshold, voluntary registration is possible – sensible if your clients are predominantly businesses. The relevant provisions govern the procedure (including Art. 26 MWSTV on invoice requirements, AHVG Art. 2–3 on the delimitation of self-employment, and OR Art. 469 on merchant status).
