According to the official guidelines on filling out wage statements, partial unemployment benefit is generally listed in Section 7 «Other benefits».
Unemployment insurance fund benefits: All unemployment insurance fund (ALV) benefits and other loss of earnings insurances paid by the employer (e.g., ALV short-time work and bad weather compensation as well as subsidies) are to be specified;
Point 34
Wage statement (admin.ch)
However, this regulation originates from the time when short-time work compensation was applied to and billed for each individual employee. This way, the amount per employee could be precisely defined and correctly shown in the wage statement.
In the current phase, a shortened, summary application and compensation procedure is used for short-time work if it is related to measures taken to contain COVID-19. In this case, short-time work compensation is applied to and paid for company departments or the whole company. It is therefore impossible to precisely break down the compensation per employee.
However, various cantonal tax authorities require that, on the one hand, the amounts per employee be listed in Section 7 and, on the other hand, the number of short-time work days be recorded in Section 15, «Comments». Short-time work compensation received should be distributed among employees as a percentage in Section 7 in proportion to the lost wages, and the difference should be compensated for in Section 1 of the wage statement.
From our point of view, this approach leads to unequal treatment of taxpayers, since it is impossible to make a correct breakdown due to the summary application process. It is imperative to check the correct procedure for you with your tax authority. We recommend including the comment in section 15 of the wage statement as follows:
Number of short-time work days: 15
The continued payment of wages is recorded in Section 1.
You can enter comments either in the employees’ personnel card before the last pay process or in columns «Comments» and «Comments 2» in the pay process list after the pay process. The last pay process of the respective year is decisive for the wage statement.
Important: This procedure has not been agreed on with the cantonal or federal tax administration. In any case, clarify the situation with your contact person at the respective cantonal tax administration. SwissSalary Ltd. accepts no liability in any case.