In Schwyz and Nidwalden, and in 2025 also in Zug, more taxpayers are worth over 10 million francs than there are households registering their cleaner in the simplified procedure

Clino expected Zug, Schwyz, Nidwalden and Obwalden to have the fewest registrations per millionaire, Basel-City and Zurich the most. For central Switzerland this holds: Nidwalden, Zug and Schwyz are in the top four, Obwalden 7th. The other end largely holds too: the most registrations per millionaire are in Solothurn, Ticino, Bern, Zurich and Basel-City. In Basel-City, however, not because it registers especially often, but because the tax statistics show fewer millionaires there than the Swiss average (6.0 %).

It is starkest for very large fortunes. The canton of Schwyz counts 1,677 taxpayers worth over ten million francs, but 1,499 households in the simplified procedure. Nidwalden 357 to 222. In Zug (1,260 to 1,169) the finding rests on the 2025 drop: with the 2024 count (1,597 households), registrations would outnumber multimillionaires. In Zurich, 4,488 multimillionaires compare with 22,796 registered households.

If domestic help is paid mainly by the well-off, cantons with more millionaires should have markedly more registered households. Across the 20 cantons without chèque-emploi the relationship is weak: r = +0.24 for the millionaire share, r = +0.32 for the share of taxpayers with net income above CHF 200,000. In a simple model (log of the registration rate against log of the millionaire share), twice as many millionaires go with about 20 % more registrations. The 95 % interval runs from −8 % to +65 % (bootstrap, elasticity 0.27, interval −0.12 to 0.72). A proportional relationship (twice the millionaires, twice the registrations) lies outside this interval.

Clino deliberately publishes no number of «missing» employers per canton. It depends entirely on how strongly demand is assumed to rise with wealth. Using the spending per income fifth from the Household Budget Survey, Zug is close to its expected value and the largest gaps are in Basel-Country, Nidwalden, Lucerne and St. Gallen; assuming proportionality to millionaires, Zug would have about 2,413 registered households instead of 1,169, Schwyz about 2,976 instead of 1,499. Both are consistent with the public data. The only robust finding is that a canton’s registration rate barely reflects its wealth.

The BFS Household Budget Survey reports spending on «domestic services» by income fifth. The top income fifth (gross income from CHF 13,717 a month) spent on average CHF 55.31 a month in 2020–2021, the middle fifths between CHF 9.38 and 15.10. The top fifth thus accounts for 52 % of all spending; in 2015–2017 and 2018–2019 it was 56 % and 57 %. The values of single fifths are sample estimates with wide error margins; the direction is the same in all three periods.

The simplified procedure is only open if no wage exceeds CHF 22,680 a year and the total payroll stays below CHF 60,480 (AHV leaflet 2.07, as of 2026). A cleaner working two full days a week at CHF 30 an hour already exceeds the first limit. Households with larger jobs settle in the ordinary procedure, like a company, and do not appear as households in the federal statistic. Nor do households that book help through an agency such as Batmaid or Helpling: there the agency is the employer.

How large this invisible part is, the few compensation offices that count all household employers show. In Zurich the simplified procedure is just over half of them, in Basel-Country one sixth. Using these totals, Zurich has 2.3 millionaires per household employer, Ticino 1.1, Basel-Country 1.5. For Zug, Schwyz and Nidwalden no such figure exists: the annual reports of 15 further German-speaking offices give only all employers together, and the Zug office publishes no annual report online.

The ESTV counted 3,486 lump-sum taxpayers in 2022. 57 % of them live in the six French-speaking chèque-emploi cantons, above all Vaud, Valais and Geneva, whose registrations are mostly missing from the AHV statistic; Ticino adds 682. Zurich, Basel-City, Basel-Country, Schaffhausen and Appenzell Outer Rhodes have abolished lump-sum taxation. A comparison with registrations is therefore not possible. Lump-sum taxpayers are also not included in the wealth statistics; the millionaire counts in this study, if anything, understate wealth in cantons such as Zug, Schwyz or Graubünden.

Zug lost 26.8 % of its households in the simplified procedure from 2024 to 2025, from 1,597 to 1,169. At the 2024 level, Zug would have more registered households than multimillionaires. Clino has found no public explanation: neither the canton’s annual report nor the BSV’s notes give a reason. The same BSV table shows 1,402 employees for 2024, barely fewer than the year before (1,420), and CHF 528,887 in contributions settled, the highest sum since 2018. Zug’s employer count has jumped before: from 2,039 (2017) to 1,589 (2018) and back to 1,992 (2019). Whether fewer households employed someone in 2025 or the count changed, only the compensation office can say. For Schwyz and Nidwalden the finding holds in both years.

At municipal level, on Zurich’s Gold Coast or Geneva’s left bank, the comparison would be most telling. But no compensation office and no chèque service publishes registered households by municipality.

A household in Wollerau faces the same rules as one in Olten: AHV contributions are due from the first franc of wages, and accident insurance from the first working day. Up to CHF 22,680 per person and CHF 60,480 in total wages, the simplified procedure is open; above that the household settles in the ordinary procedure, with a salary certificate, an annual statement and, depending on the hours, occupational pension cover. Clino explains the registration with the cantonal compensation office step by step for every canton; the household decides and signs itself.