Living in France and working in Switzerland: which country taxes your salary?

If you live in France and work in Geneva, Switzerland taxes your salary, through tax withheld at source (impôt à la source) that your employer deducts every month. The France-Switzerland tax convention of 9 September 1966 lets the country where the job is done tax the salary (article 17), and Geneva is not part of the 1983 cross-border agreement. Swiss federal law therefore taxes at source people living abroad who work in Switzerland (article 91 of the Federal Act on Direct Federal Tax, LIFD).

You are not taxed twice: France takes the salary into account on your return, then grants a tax credit equal to the French tax on it. According to OCSTAT, the Geneva statistics office (6 August 2026), 118 067 foreign cross-border workers (frontaliers) worked in the canton of Geneva at the end of June 2026, out of 414 262 in Switzerland.

Yes, you still report a salary already taxed in Geneva on your French return, on form 2047-SUISSE (CAS 2.A) and then on lines 1AF and 8TK of the main return (form 2042). Your tax home (domicile fiscal) stays in France, so France taxes your worldwide income (article 4 A of the French General Tax Code).

The convention says this income is taken into account to compute the French tax and gives a tax credit equal to the French tax on it, provided Swiss tax applied to it (article 25, A, paragraph 1(a)). In practice the Geneva salary adds no French tax of its own, but it raises the rate applied to your other income and to your household's. The form notes reserve this credit for salaries taxed under the standard Swiss withholding scale: keep your Swiss salary certificate (certificat de salaire) or withholding receipt.

In the eight cantons of the 1983 agreement, you lose cross-border worker status if you spend more than 45 nights a year away from France for work, or if you work from home in France for more than 40 % of your working time over the calendar year. The 45 nights include nights in Switzerland and business trips to other countries; part-time workers get a lower ceiling (36 days at 80 %, 31 days at 70 %).

Renting a home in Switzerland creates a presumption that you stay there regularly. Without the status, you fall under CAS 2 of form 2047-SUISSE: Swiss tax, then a credit in France. In Geneva, nights away do not change which country taxes you; above 40 % home working, however, the part of the salary for home-working days is taxable in France from the first day.