Filing your taxes can be difficult and annoying, especially if the tax office tries to reject some of your deductions.

What would you do if your tax auditor kept trying to tell you that one of your deductions was unreasonable?

That is what was happening to the woman in this story, so she finally filed with strict adherence to their rules, which ended up getting her a bigger deduction than before.

Let’s read all about it.

Tax office won’t accept my tax deduction: I claim even more deduction on the same basis used to deny it

In Switzerland, each and every tax filing is verified by a tax assessor which can accepts, modify or refuse the deductions you claim.

If you don’t agree, you can appeal the decision and another office will look into it.

Two of the deductions we have are lunches away form home (you can claim it when you don’t have enough time to get back home for lunch break) and mileage deduction.

We are allowed to deduct from gross income CHF 15.- (USD 19.-) for every meal away from home and 0.60 CHF per Km (1,21 USD per mile) we drive to get and get back from workplace.

At least she got her way.

A little flashback: in 2020 and 2021 I had to file 2 appeals ’cause my tax assessor of the time made a real mess.

Given that appeals are not so frequent, in 2021 I was audited by Tax Office.

After 6 months of back and forth, the auditor agreed that I was completely right and his colleague was to blame for the macroscopic errors he made.

This is too funny.

With a smile on my face I even asked to the auditor if it wouldn’t be more useful to audit his colleagues instead of me; he laughed and replied “I can’t answer that question”.

In the following years I even called him a couple of times to get some clarification so we established maybe not a friendship, but some real mutual respect.

Fast forward to 2025, I filed my 2024 taxes claiming both deductions for 200 working days ’cause, even if my office is just 15Km (9.3 miles) from home, I don’t have the time to get back for lunch.

Seems pretty similar to previous years.

The deductions in my tax filing were:

Lunch deduction: 15 CHF x 200 days = 3’000.- CHF

Mileage deduction: 0.6 CHF x 15 Km x 2 trips per day x 200 working days = 3’600.- CHF

Total deductions: 6’600.- CHF

Not this again.

After a couple of months I received in the mail the tax assessment and, among other things, the tax assessor refused lunch deduction ’cause, in his opinion, I had enough time to go home for lunch.

I appealed the decision and…. here it comes the malicious compliance.

They refused the lunch deduction ’cause, they stated, I had enough time to go home for lunch?

Perfect so, instead of 1 round trip per day, I claimed mileage deduction for 2 round trips per day which means:

Oh, this is going to work out well.

CHF 0.6 x 15 Km x 4 trips per day x 200 working days = 7’200.- CHF which are 600.- CHF more than what I claimed in the tax filing.

A month later I got a call from the very same tax auditor that audited me in 2021. After a few pleasantries the call went something like this.

This good auditor understands that it is going to work out in her favor.

“Look, Lordnite, you know I’m calling ’cause of your last appeal. I have to side with my colleague: given the distance we can’t accept your lunch deductions.

However, I also have to admit that, if you have to go back and forth twice, you are entitled to claim more mileage deduction. Very well played…”

I could see the smile on his face and a week later I received the new tax bill.

The taxable income was 600.- CHF (750 USD) lower and they even had to bare the cost of managing my appeal.

It isn’t often that you go up against the tax man and win, but this person did just that. Congratulations!

Let’s see what the people in the comments on Reddit have to say about it.

Nobody accused the tax office of making sense.

Yes, this worked out well for her.

This would be quite a job.

Yeah, I think they could have.

This is a really good question.

Fine, I’ll follow the rules, but you won’t like it.

If you liked this post, check out this story about an employee who got revenge on a co-worker who kept grading their work suspiciously low.