Motorhome tax
What does your motorhome cost in tax?
It all turns on 3500 kilos. Above and below that line many cantons apply two entirely different tariffs – and they do not even agree on which side is the expensive one.
A hundred kilos decide it
The same motorhome at 3500 and then at 3600 kg: in Schwyz the tax very nearly quadruples, in Basel-Landschaft it barely moves. The line is federal; what happens at it is not.
The document never says motorhome
Federal law treats a motorhome with up to nine seats as a passenger car. Twenty cantons therefore have no line for one at all – the question is always which existing tariff it lands on.
Usually no CO₂ figure
A motorhome rarely carries a CO₂ value and never an energy label. Where a canton writes its eco rules for passenger cars, they do not reach it – sometimes to the owner’s benefit, sometimes not.
The 3500-kilo line
A motorhome is not a vehicle kind in its own right. Article 11 of the federal technical-requirements ordinance treats it as a passenger car, then splits passenger cars at 3500 kg into “passenger car” and “heavy motor vehicle” – which is why no registration document carries “motorhome” as its vehicle kind, and why most cantons have no motorhome line. Six cantons name motorhomes expressly; the rest route them onto an existing tariff through the federal classification. What that costs is then entirely a matter of canton: for the same step across 3500 kg the bill multiplies in some and hardly moves in others. Choosing between two build specifications at purchase is therefore also choosing a tax bill – every year.