6 · The null count — six terms, 33'000 words, six zeros

So far the subject has been what the documents say. This chapter is about what they do not say — and about an absence that becomes a finding only when the method that measured it comes with it.

On 25 August 2025 the Steueramt Zürich showed a slide headed «E-Bilanz ab Steuerperiode 2025» (e-Bilanz from tax period 2025). Beneath it sat a diagram of three boxes and two arrows: Buchhaltungssystem — Export → E-Bilanz (XBRL, CH-Taxonomie) — Import (XBRL) → ZHcorporateTax. On the left «Muster AG» (a sample company); on the right «Kantonales Steueramt» (the cantonal tax office). That is not a declaration of intent; it is a data point with a picture attached. Tax period 2025 is the period whose tax return falls due by 30 September 2026, according to the canton's own Wegleitung: «Die Steuererklärung ist bis am 30. September des auf die Steuerperiode folgenden Kalenderjahres einzureichen.» (the tax return is to be filed by 30 September of the calendar year following the tax period).

This chapter counts what the canton has told those same taxpayers about that function. The result is a zero, and a zero is worth no more than the method that measured it. The method therefore comes first.

The method

The count was made on 04.08.2026 over the extracted text of the crawled documents, with word-boundary regex rather than substring search. The difference is not academic: a naive search for ech returns ten hits in a German tax text, every one of them inside Jahresrechnung, Obligationenrecht, and entsprechend. Six strings were searched — E-Bilanz, XBRL, eCH-0276, Taxonomie, swissdec, and Instanzdokument — across exactly those documents addressed to taxpayers and their representatives: the official Wegleitung, the portal's Hilfe-Center, and the portal pages on zh.ch. The count excludes what it tested, and nothing beyond it.

The table

Some 33'000 words of running Zürich documentation addressed to taxpayers and their representatives; six search terms; a zero in every cell.

The counter-finding that makes the zero hold

A null count is worth nothing if the instrument is blunt. Hence the counter-finding: the same Wegleitung 505 for tax period 2025 names ZHcorporateTax seven times and Jahresrechnung eighteen times. The 2024 edition names ZHcorporateTax zero times; the portal did not yet exist.

Between the two editions the canton wrote the name of its new application into its official Wegleitung seven times. The e-Bilanz, not once. The section «Was ist neu in der Steuerperiode 2025?» (what is new in tax period 2025) names two items: ZHcorporateTax and the end of the Sondersatzlösung. The first of them, verbatim and in full:

«ZHcorporateTax – die Online-Steuererklärung für juristische Personen. Seit August 2025 steht auch für juristische Personen eine benutzerfreundliche, effiziente und sichere Online-Deklarationslösung zur Verfügung. Sie ermöglicht eine vollständig digitale und unterschriftsfreie Einreichung der Steuererklärung.» (ZHcorporateTax – the online tax return for legal entities. Since August 2025 a user-friendly, efficient and secure online Deklarationslösung has also been available for legal entities. It allows a fully digital, signature-free filing of the tax return.)

— Wegleitung 505 for Kapitalgesellschaften, tax period 2025

The Wegleitung that tells taxpayers what is new in this period does not mention the function announced for that same period. The instrument is sharp. It registers a presence seven times and an absence six times over.

Where the terms do appear

They appear in exactly three documents, all three from a seven-week window in the summer of 2025:

None of these three documents is a set of instructions. A media release, a slide deck from a one-off online event, and a follow-up questions-and-answers paper: 2'489 words in all, written between 18 July and 8 September 2025. After that — in the autumn 2025 Wegleitung, in the Hilfe-Center, on the portal pages — the same terms fall silent.

The condition the canton set itself

The media release of 18.07.2025 carries the sentence that places the whole finding; it is rarely quoted in full:

«Die Onlineapplikation ist technisch bereit für die E-Bilanz, mit der sich die erforderlichen Daten aus der Jahresrechnung automatisch aus den Buchhaltungssystemen in die Online-Steuererklärung übertragen lassen. Dies wird dann für die nächste Steuerperiode möglich sein, wenn die nötigen Datenstandards auch in den Buchhaltungssystemen der Unternehmen eingebaut sind.» (the online application is technically ready for the e-Bilanz, with which the required data from the Jahresrechnung can be transferred automatically from the accounting systems into the online tax return. This will be possible for the next tax period once the necessary data standards are also built into the companies' accounting systems.)

— Media release of the Canton of Zürich, 18.07.2025

The canton ties availability not to itself but to the companies' accounting systems. That is a legitimate statement of a dependency. It does not explain the zero. If the function depends on data standards being built into accounting systems, then the dependency itself is exactly the information a taxpayer needs: which standard, which version, which accounting system, and from when. None of that appears in the 32'919 words. The conditional sentence names a precondition without supplying the detail against which it could be checked.

The slide of 25.08.2025 states it without a condition: «E-Bilanz ab Steuerperiode 2025» (e-Bilanz from tax period 2025). Two cantonal documents five weeks apart, one with a conditional and one without.

The Hilfe-Center, measured editorially

The ZHcorporateTax Hilfe-Center holds 70 articles across 11 sections and 3 categories. Creation dates run from 30.05.2025 to 22.08.2025, the last working day before the information event. No article has been created since.

Modification timestamps fall on exactly two dates: 08.06.2026 (57 articles) and 22.07.2026 (13 articles). Seventy articles, two timestamps. That is the signature of a bulk operation — a migration, a field change, an export — rather than of editorial work spread across fourteen months. An earlier version of this analysis wrote «gepflegt bis Juli 2026» (maintained until July 2026). The sentence is true, and it is the wrong fact: it describes a timestamp and implies an activity. The precise statement replaces it here: the stock has been unchanged since 22.08.2025, and all 70 articles carry exactly two modification dates.

That dates the relation to the announcement: the most recent creation date in the Hilfe-Center falls on 22.08.2025, three days before the event at which the e-Bilanz was announced. No article has carried a new creation date since.

The one article with «Importieren» in its title

It exists. It is called «Importieren und Exportieren» (import and export), sits in the section «Vorjahresdaten importieren» (import prior-year data), and describes the re-reading of a file the portal itself produced:

«Es öffnet sich die Schaltfläche ‹cTax Steuererklärung importieren› … Wählen Sie in der Eingabemaske die gewünschte zip-Datei aus dem Explorer aus. Standardmässig sind die Dateien mit ‹com.riag.jp.zh20xx› erstellt. Wichtig: Die Datei muss immer lokal auf Ihrem PC gespeichert sein, damit sie importiert werden kann.» (the ‹cTax Steuererklärung importieren› button opens … in the input mask, select the desired zip file from Explorer. By default the files are created as ‹com.riag.jp.zh20xx›. Important: the file must always be stored locally on your PC so that it can be imported.)

— Hilfe-Center ZHcorporateTax, article «Importieren und Exportieren»

So an import is documented. It is the portal's import of its own file. The path the slide draws — accounting system into portal — has no article in the Hilfe-Center.

The control counts

Lest the zero be taken for an artefact of the search terms, here is the same word-boundary count over the same 70 articles with other terms: Vertret* 19 · Jahresrechnung 10 · AGOV 10 · Bilanz 7 · Import* 7 · Zugangsdaten 7.

And three further zeros: Verordnung 0 · 631.121 0 · Treuhand* 0. The Hilfe-Center of an application whose legal basis is a Verordnung, and whose typical operator is a Treuhänder, names neither of them once.

The mirror finding: Obwalden and Appenzell Ausserrhoden

The Zürich finding could be read as a start-up effect: a portal that went live in August 2025 and whose documentation trails its functionality. The mirror finding rules that reading out.

Obwalden has accepted e-Bilanzen since tax period 2022. Appenzell Ausserrhoden switched its solution on in January 2026. Three current documents addressed to users were counted: the Obwalden help for the cantonal Deklarationslösung (18.02.2026), the Obwalden login instructions (18.02.2026), and the Ausserrhoden instructions for tax period 2025 (16.01.2026). Together, 1'497 words.

Hits for XBRL, eCH, Taxonomie, XML, Instanzdokument, Signatur, Format, swissdec, and Schnittstelle: zero in every case.

Hits for E-Bilanz: 12.

Twelve times the user is prompted to pull in «die E-Bilanz» (the e-Bilanz) — verbatim from the Obwalden help: «Die E-Bilanz können Sie über den Button ‹E-Bilanz auswählen› oder per Drag and Drop in die Steuererklärung importieren» (you can import the e-Bilanz into the tax return via the ‹E-Bilanz auswählen› button or by drag and drop) — and nowhere in those 1'497 words learns what it is, what format it comes in, which version applies, or how to tell whether the file is right. Four productive tax periods, two cantons, and not one word about format.

The same finding therefore stands in three documents from two further cantons, whose operation reaches back four years and one year respectively. About the cantons and documents we did not retrieve, the count says nothing.

The counterpoint that does exist

To read the zero as general silence would go past what it shows. On the mandatory attachment the canton is entirely clear, and in the same Hilfe-Center in which the e-Bilanz does not appear:

«Die Jahresrechnung (Bilanz, Erfolgsrechnung und Anhang) muss in jedem Fall zusammen mit der Steuererklärung eingereicht werden. … HINWEIS: Auch inaktive Gesellschaften müssen jeweils eine Jahresrechnung erstellen und diese der Steuererklärung beilegen.» (the Jahresrechnung — balance sheet, income statement and notes — must in every case be filed together with the tax return. … NOTE: inactive companies too must each prepare a Jahresrechnung and attach it to the tax return.)

— Hilfe-Center ZHcorporateTax, article «Pflichtbelege Jahresrechnung»

«In jedem Fall» (in every case). «Auch inaktive Gesellschaften» (inactive companies too). Where the canton states an obligation, it states it unambiguously and without a conditional. That measures the asymmetry cleanly: the obligation is explained, the relief is announced. The mandatory attachment does not stand against the e-Bilanz; it stands beside it. Anyone who delivers structured figures also delivers the signed Jahresrechnung as a PDF.

What this is and what it is not

This is not a criticism of an editorial team. It is a data point: the announced function is not explained to users at the point at which it falls due. The deadline for tax period 2025 runs out on 30.09.2026. For that period the canton's slide is headed «E-Bilanz ab Steuerperiode 2025». For that period the canton's official Wegleitung does not contain the word.

The finding is a relation in time between two cantonal documents, not a statement about anyone's work. Anyone who searches the same seven files with the same word-boundary regex can check it.

And what is untested

Two documents exist only as PDFs and could not be evaluated in this count: Formular 500 (the tax return for Kapitalgesellschaften, editions 2025 and 2026) and Formular 510. No text extractor was available in the system used, so the count could not be applied to those two files. Whether the form itself names E-Bilanz, XBRL, or eCH-0276 is therefore untested — not zero. The count likewise says nothing about zh.ch pages that were not crawled.

A published zero has to say where it stops. It stops here.

The prediction, with class, grade, and falsifier

Claim: On 30.09.2026, when the filing deadline for tax period 2025 runs out, neither the Wegleitung 505 for tax period 2025, nor the ZHcorporateTax Hilfe-Center, nor any of the crawled zh.ch pages for legal entities will contain instructions for importing an e-Bilanz — measured as zero word-boundary hits for «E-Bilanz», «XBRL», «eCH-0276», «CH-Taxonomie», and «Instanzdokument».

Class: threshold by date. Grade: B — and B is the ceiling here, not restraint. The rubric caps threshold-by-date statements at B, however strong the reasoning behind them. The reasoning is strong: the Hilfe-Center has had no new article since 22.08.2025, the Wegleitung for the affected period has appeared and is silent, and the canton itself tied availability to a third party. That still does not lift the grade.

Falsifier: a zh.ch article, a Wegleitung addendum, or a Hilfe-Center article published before 30.09.2026 that contains at least one of the five strings at word-boundary precision. Test method: the identical word-boundary regex, the identical URLs, and the identical Zendesk export as in the baseline of 04.08.2026 — 70 articles, all terms zero; the zh.ch pages for legal entities and for switching, all terms zero.

We will check. The baseline is on record, the method is set out above, and one counter-item is enough.

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