My questions are: 

- Will I have to pay US taxes on top of Swiss taxes? (total income in 2016 will be less than 15K)

If you exceed the Foreing Earned Income exemption, you might have to pay taxes. That is based on your world wide income and as your married, that is a joint return. so you may or maynot have to pay any taxes.

- How do I pay the Swiss taxes if AVS is not taking them directly? 

First for swiss AVS, you must either be employed or contributing to AVS, AVS is crap, you can not expect much on retirement. You must contribute either with employer, your own registered business or imdependate scheme that is called LPP and 3eme piliar.

- Do I have to declare myself as a freelancer even though I just have one client? 

If your working in Switzerland and your not registed or have valid work permit, they can detain you and extradite you back to the USA. You have no right unless you have valid permit/s and are declaring your income. 

In Switzerland the most important things to avoid problems is 

1) pay your taxes

2) pay your bills

3) Learn the Swiss National anthem and learn a national language, ehehehehehe joke joke joke

HI Dave, 

First of all, thank you very much for your response and answers! I do have a Permis B with right to work, so I hope I won't be detained ;) BUT, what is confusing is the process to 'register' as a freelancer as it's technically a second job on top of my already documented part time contract. I was planning on just declaring the income with our 2016 income taxes - should I be doing that already before taxes are due? 

Regarding the registered business, I was told by another person that unless I have several clients, I  should not have to create an LPP scheme. However, now I will look into doing so. 

Thanks, 

Carrie

Hi,

If you only have one freelance position, you should in principle not need to register as a self-employed. Considering, however, that you receive revenues in addition to your usual revenues which are subject to a taxation at source, you should ask the Geneva tax administration to fill in an ordinary tax return (maybe that for a small revenue you could obtain an exemption, but they usually send you some forms to be filled in in order to determine if you should be subject to an ordinary taxation instead of the tax at source). The same applies for someone who has a taxable net wealth (duty to announce this as well).

Regarding your US taxes, the principle is that you should announce your revenues in your US tax return (if you are US national), but you should be able to obtain a tax credit for the taxes you pay in Switzerland.

Regarding your US taxes, you will have to fill in your tax returns, and pay taxes on your income. You have to declare ALL your income, as freelancer, or employee. You do get a credit for any foreign earned income for the first $ 100,800 (IRS form 2555), and if your annual income was higher than that, you also get some credit for the taxes paid to Switzerland (see IRS form 1116) but you have to adjust it to the proportion of your income that was foreign earned income and thus already exempt from taxes. If you, for example, pay the Swiss taxes for USD $150,800 in income, you will be able to deduct what you paid the Swiss in taxes for $50,000 of your income, since you already got a break for the first $100,800 as foreign earned income. Seems like this year you will be OK. If in future years you expect to have any tax liability at the end of the year (anything over the foreign earned income exclusion), you have to make quarterly estimated payments. Otherwise, you will be charged interest and a penalty by the IRS.

I do not know about Swiss taxes, but my impression is that they expect you to pay your taxes to them and deal with double taxation issues with the US or France or whoever else you have to pay taxes to. It is best to find out what their rules are and pay every cent you are liable for. They will find out, and come after you if you don't declare it.