Zürich's Inheritance Tax Rules Leave Childless Singles Behind — And That's Not Changing Soon
A proposal to level the playing field for unmarried, childless residents was swiftly dismissed by the cantonal parliament.
If you are single, have no children, and live in the canton of Zürich, whoever you choose to leave your estate to will likely hand a sizeable portion of it straight to the tax authority. A recent attempt to change that reality has come and gone in the Kantonsrat, leaving the status quo firmly intact.
The push came from Sylvia Locher of Wädenswil, representing Pro Single Schweiz, who argued that the canton's inheritance tax framework systematically disadvantages a growing segment of the population. Under existing rules, assets passed between spouses or from parent to child attract no inheritance tax at all. Yet when someone outside those conventional family structures — a long-term partner, a trusted friend, a devoted caregiver — is named as a beneficiary, they are taxed at the highest rate the canton levies. Locher's proposal would have given childless, unmarried residents the right to nominate one person to inherit on the same tax-free terms currently reserved for spouses and children.
A Coalition of Reluctance
The initiative needed 60 cantonal councillors to back it in order to advance. It received 13 — almost entirely from the GLP. The rest of the chamber was unmoved, and the opposition was telling in its variety. Right-leaning parties held that the existing system's bias toward marriage and parenthood is a feature, not a flaw — an expression of how the canton chooses to recognise and reward conventional family formation. The left rejected the initiative on entirely different grounds, viewing any reduction in inheritance tax receipts as a step in the wrong direction regardless of who benefits.
The practical effect is straightforward: for the foreseeable future, a childless single person in Zürich has no tax-efficient way to pass on what they have built — unless they happen to fall in love and formalise it.
