8 · Obwalden — four tax periods ahead, and what they did not buy

Anyone who wants to know what the machine-readable Jahresrechnung actually changes in Switzerland need not look to Zürich. The place to look is a canton of around 38'000 residents that has been running in production, for four tax periods, what the largest canton in Switzerland announced in August 2025. Obwalden is the only place in the entire corpus where the process reads as an operating history rather than as an intention. An operating history shows three things no announcement can: what the file has replaced, what has become of the container it sits in, and whether the canton that had the head start has stayed on the path that gave it one.

The chronology, with the arithmetic

The one technical document that has ever described the mechanism carries the date 30.07.2018 in the footer of each of its 17 pages. It is a Herstellerhandbuch (vendor manual). The canton of Obwalden published it on its own publications page on 16 February 2023, prefaced by a single sentence: «Anleitung für den Export der E-Bilanz CH aus ABACUS für den Import in CleverTax» (a guide to exporting the E-Bilanz CH from ABACUS for import into CleverTax) (ow.ch/publikationen/31438, 16.02.2023). By then the online Deklarationslösung was in operation: «Clever.tax JP wurde in Obwalden mit der Steuerperiode 2022 in Betrieb genommen» (Clever.tax JP went into operation in Obwalden with the 2022 tax period) (ow.ch/publikationen/31444, 18.02.2026). Zürich went live in mid-August 2025.

Two figures follow from this, and they measure different things.

Three completed tax periods ahead in the online declaration for juristische Personen (legal entities) — 2022, 2023, and 2024 ran online in Obwalden before Zürich accepted its first return. Seven years and 26 days between the writing of the mechanism and the go-live of the largest canton — from 30.07.2018 to 25.08.2025. The phrase «zweieinhalb Jahre» (two and a half years) in our own earlier draft is correct, but it holds for exactly one pair of dates: 16.02.2023 to 25.08.2025, that is, from the cantonal publication of the manual to the Zürich Informationsveranstaltung. It does not measure the operating head start, and we mark it here for what it is.

The correction to our own statement

In an earlier version we wrote that eCH-0276 does not appear in the Obwalden documentation. Of the 2018 manual that holds — the term does not occur once, and XBRL appears exactly once, in a parenthesis on page 15 of 17. Of the canton it is wrong. The publications page of 18 February 2026 says, verbatim:

«Clever.tax JP wurde in Obwalden mit der Steuerperiode 2022 in Betrieb genommen. Ab der Steuerperiode 2025 setzen wir neu auf den schweizweit gültigen Übermittlungsstandard eCH-0276 für Deklarationen von juristischen Personen. Mit der neusten Version haben wir verschiedene Verbesserungen aufgrund von Kundenrückmeldungen vorgenommen.» (Clever.tax JP went into operation in Obwalden with the 2022 tax period. From the 2025 tax period we are adopting the Switzerland-wide transmission standard eCH-0276 for declarations by juristische Personen. In the latest version we have made a number of improvements in response to customer feedback.)

And in the paragraph immediately above, on the same page and the same day:

«Clever.tax JP ist die Online-Deklarationslösung für juristische Personen im Kanton Obwalden, welche den Import der E-Bilanz in die Online-Deklaration ermöglicht … Die E-Bilanz kann aus Buchhaltungsprogrammen wie z.B. ABACUS exportiert werden.» (Clever.tax JP is the online Deklarationslösung for juristische Personen in the canton of Obwalden, which makes it possible to import the E-Bilanz into the online declaration … The E-Bilanz can be exported from accounting programs such as ABACUS.)

Both sentences stand side by side, and they do not contradict each other. They are the two ends of one line, exactly as Part 2 read them off the swissdec Kommunikationsmatrix: XBRL in from the accounting system, eCH-0276 out from the Deklarationslösung to the Steuerdomizile. Obwalden is the only place in the 331'014 words analysed where both ends of the same line are visible in a single official document — and in operation rather than in planning.

What the page does not say: which format the import button accepts from the 2025 tax period onwards. Two readings are admissible. Either XBRL in and eCH-0276 out, as the Transmitter-Spezifikation describes it; or eCH-0276 in both directions. No public document in our corpus settles it, and the cantonal Anleitungen settle it least of all — the count follows in a moment. We say so plainly, and we do not fill the gap with the more plausible reading. We have never imported a file into a cantonal portal; we cannot know, so we do not claim it.

The only end-to-end evidence in the whole corpus

The 2018 manual describes eleven wizard steps. Measured against the entire corpus of 255 files, it is the one complete description of how a Swiss E-Bilanz comes into being. The load-bearing passages, verbatim:

Step 2, the taxonomy version: «Für die Taxonomie stehen zurzeit die Versionen 2016 und 2018 zur Verfügung. Es sollte nur noch die Version 2018 verwendet werden.» (for the taxonomy, versions 2016 and 2018 are currently available; version 2018 alone should be used from now on). Step 4, the automatic mapping: «Unmittelbar nach Import der Taxonomie wird ein Mapping der Konten anhand der KMU-Kontenrahmen Nummern durchgeführt. So wird z.B. eine Kontonummer 1020 in der Klassierung der OR-Taxonomie dem Bankguthaben zugeordnet.» (immediately after the taxonomy is imported, the accounts are mapped using the KMU-Kontenrahmen numbers; account number 1020, for example, is assigned to bank balances in the classification of the OR-Taxonomie). Step 5, the remainder: «…werden in der Klassierung die nicht klassierten Details mittels drag&drop auf die entsprechenden Klassierungselemente gezogen.» (in the classification, the unclassified details are dragged onto the corresponding classification elements by drag&drop). Step 8, the one least expected: «Erfassung der Werte für die Gewinnverwendung und allfälliger Angaben zu stillen Reserven respektive latenten Steuern.» (capture of the values for the appropriation of profit, and of any statements on stille Reserven or latente Steuern). Step 11, the close: «Nach Erstellung (Generierung) der E-Bilanz kann diese im Viewer angezeigt werden … um das PDF ab dem Client dem Empfänger zuzustellen.» (once the E-Bilanz has been created (generated) it can be displayed in the Viewer … in order to deliver the PDF from the client to the recipient).

Step 8 qualifies a thesis this text otherwise holds. Tax corrections, as the usual account has it, cannot come out of any balance-sheet file. Stille Reserven and latente Steuern are tax corrections, and in 2018 they were captured in the wizard — not in the portal. Part of what counts as unbridgeable today was once part of the artefact.

The cost line that appears nowhere else in the programme

The manual closes on a sentence that no other document in the corpus, cantonal or national, repeats:

«Die Erstellung des ersten Jahresabschlusses benötigt aufgrund des notwendigen Kontenplan-Mapping wesentlich mehr Zeit als nachfolgende Abschlüsse.» (preparing the first Jahresabschluss takes considerably more time than the ones that follow, because of the chart-of-accounts mapping it requires)

— Herstellerhandbuch §4, dated 30.07.2018, published by the canton of Obwalden 16.02.2023

Beside it, from the Umsetzungsplan of Digitale Verwaltung Schweiz, project INM2.084, for which the Schweizerische Steuerkonferenz (the Swiss Tax Conference) carries delivery, adopted on 27.10.2025:

«Die Unternehmen können aus ihren Finanzbuchhaltungen direkt auf Knopfdruck die notwendigen Finanzdaten nach eCH-0276 für die Steuererklärung Juristische Personen in die Deklarationslösung der kantonalen Steuerverwaltungen übermitteln.» (companies can transmit the financial data required for the Steuererklärung Juristische Personen from their financial accounting, in eCH-0276 form, directly at the push of a button into the Deklarationslösung of the cantonal tax administrations)

The gap between these two sentences is the most robust argument in this text, and it consists entirely of quotations. One sentence describes what happens when a Kontenplan meets a taxonomy for the first time. The other describes what happens when it does so the second time. Both are true. The second is the one that appears in the programme communication. Anyone who knows the first plans differently — one round of effort, then automation, rather than automation from day one.

The reversal of the container

In 2018 the E-Bilanz was an object. Verbatim:

«E-Bilanz PDF – darin enthalten: Instanzdokument.xml. Das PDF mit der Bilanz/Erfolgsrechnung enthält als Anlage das «Instanzdokument.xml». Dieses XML wird vom Empfängersystem verarbeitet. Das PDF ist mit einem Swisscom TSA 3 Zertifikat signiert.» (E-Bilanz PDF – containing: Instanzdokument.xml. The PDF with the balance sheet / income statement carries the Instanzdokument.xml as an attachment. This XML is processed by the recipient system. The PDF is signed with a Swisscom TSA 3 certificate.)

The machine-readable file sat inside the human-readable document. One object, signable, and the signature covered both.

In 2024 it is an archive. eCH-0276 V1.0.0, §2.3 «Paketierung» (packaging), verbatim:

«Die vom Steuerpflichtigen zu sendenden Daten bestehen aus dem XML-Dokument der E-Bilanz und Steuerdeklaration, inklusive der angehängten Beilagen. Dieses Paket ist in Form eines ZIP-Archives wie folgt zu strukturieren.» (the data to be sent by the taxpayer consist of the XML document of the E-Bilanz and Steuerdeklaration, including the attached enclosures. This package is to be structured as a ZIP archive as follows.)

The human-readable documents now sit beside the machine-readable file. There is no object left to sign — and the standard looks for none. Counted across the three main eCH-0276 documents, on word boundaries, on 04.08.2026: Signatur 0 · signiert 0 · Zeitstempel 0 · Swisscom 0 · TSA 0 · Zertifikat 0. Control values in the same documents: eCH 142, Bilanz 48, XML 20.

And across the corpus, over all 57 extracted text files and 331'014 words: «Swisscom TSA» appears exactly once — in a Herstellerhandbuch from 2018 that a canton published. The one description of how a Swiss E-Bilanz is cryptographically sealed stands in no Verordnung, in no standard, in no Transmitter-Spezifikation. It stands in a single line of a vendor document that Obwalden put on its own website five years after it was written. That is why the canton of Zürich answers a question in 2025 that the 2018 architecture had answered by its own construction: whether the Jahresrechnung in the attachment has to be signed.

Two limits of the artefact that are documented nowhere else

Both stand in the manual alone, and both are operationally relevant:

«Es ist möglich, nicht nur Jahresabschlüsse als E-Bilanz zu erstellen, sondern auch unterjährige Zwischenabschlüsse. So kann z.B. ein Quartal oder Halbjahresabschluss als E-Bilanz (XBRL) aufbereitet werden.» (it is possible to prepare not only annual financial statements as an E-Bilanz, but also interim statements during the year. A quarterly or half-year statement, for example, can be prepared as an E-Bilanz (XBRL).)

The Swiss E-Bilanz is not tied to the tax period. That is a structural difference from the German one, which under § 5b EStG is bound to the Wirtschaftsjahr, and it explains why XBRL Switzerland, in its 2025 consultation paper, names «credit and research departments of banks» explicitly among the addressees, alongside Treuhänder and Steuerämter. The artefact's field of use is wider than tax — and this one place is where that is written down.

«Eine E-Bilanz umfasst maximal ein Geschäftsjahr und umfasst keine Vorjahreswerte.» (an E-Bilanz covers at most one financial year and contains no prior-year figures)

An OR-compliant Jahresrechnung carries prior-year figures. This artefact carries none. It is therefore no substitute for the Jahresrechnung as a document, and not for legal reasons but for reasons of construction. That leads straight to the next finding.

Four tax periods in production, and the PDF never left

Three cantons, three current documents:

Obwalden, help page for the cantonal JP-Deklarationslösung, published 18.02.2026: «Pflichtbeilage: Die Jahresrechnung muss zwingend angefügt werden. Ohne Jahresrechnung kann die Steuererklärung nicht eingereicht werden.» (mandatory enclosure: the Jahresrechnung must be attached; without a Jahresrechnung the Steuererklärung cannot be filed)

Appenzell Ausserrhoden, Anleitung for the 2025 tax period, PDF created 16.01.2026: «Die Jahresrechnung mit Anhang sowie die Saldobilanz sind zwingende Beilagen.» (the Jahresrechnung with Anhang and the trial balance are mandatory enclosures)

Zürich, questions and answers from the online information event, 08.09.2025, on whether a signed PDF Jahresrechnung has to be uploaded: «Gemäss OR muss die Jahresrechnung unterschrieben werden. Dabei kann anstelle der handschriftlichen eine geeignete digitale Unterschrift zum Einsatz kommen.» (under the OR the Jahresrechnung has to be signed; a suitable digital signature may be used in place of a handwritten one)

Obwalden has been importing E-Bilanzen since the 2022 tax period. Across four tax periods in production, the machine-readable file has not once replaced the signed PDF Jahresrechnung. That finding is at the same time one of our highest-graded predictions: The signed Jahresrechnung as a PDF remains a mandatory enclosure in every canton that accepts an E-Bilanz — up to and including the filing round for the 2026 tax period. Class: trend extrapolation on measured input. Grade: A. Falsifier: a cantonal Anleitung or Verordnung published before 31.12.2027 that permits a JP-Steuererklärung to be filed with a structured E-Bilanz and no enclosed Jahresrechnung. A single such document is enough.

The E-Bilanz fills the form. It does not replace the document.

Today's mechanism is a person with a mouse

The phrase «auf Knopfdruck» (at the push of a button) reads as a machine-to-machine route. Beside it stands what the canton of Obwalden writes to its users in 2026:

«Die E-Bilanz können Sie über den Button «E-Bilanz auswählen» oder per Drag and Drop in die Steuererklärung importieren. Nachdem Sie die Datei erfolgreich importiert haben, erscheint diese als Anlage … Die Werte werden automatisch aus der E-Bilanz in Clever.Tax importiert.» (you can import the E-Bilanz into the Steuererklärung via the E-Bilanz auswählen button or by drag and drop. Once the file has been imported successfully, it appears as an attachment … The values are imported automatically from the E-Bilanz into Clever.Tax.)

— Canton of Obwalden, help page for the JP-Deklarationslösung, 18.02.2026

In this document, counted on word boundaries: Schnittstelle 0, swissdec 0, Übermittlung 0. In February 2026, filing in production in the canton with the longest head start is a person dragging a file into a browser. That is how the Obwalden Anleitung sets the process out — and it is the starting position that makes the case for the swissdec route from Part 3 in the first place.

Across the three user-facing cantonal Anleitungen from Obwalden and Appenzell Ausserrhoden, 1'497 words together: XBRL 0 · eCH 0 · Taxonomie 0 · XML 0 · Instanzdokument 0 · Format 0 · Signatur 0. Control: E-Bilanz 12, Jahresrechnung 4. Four tax periods, two cantons, and none of these documents names the file the user is asked to drag in.

The delivery layer, checked for ourselves

Both cantonal installations serve their third-party licence manifest publicly. We downloaded and hashed both:

c7c78e205a00a5c65fd6df65f05ab68df9e3fce583d5b8f2a98ec0a11f7530cc  clevertax-ow-3rdpartylicenses.txt
c7c78e205a00a5c65fd6df65f05ab68df9e3fce583d5b8f2a98ec0a11f7530cc  clevertax-ar-3rdpartylicenses.txt

Identical SHA-256 over 2'186 lines. The runtime configuration env.js differs in 16 of 37 lines, and exactly two of those are substantive: customization: 'ow' versus 'ar' and canton: 'ow' versus 'ar'. The rest are host names and login realms. Anyone can check this by downloading and hashing the two files.

What that amounts to, the canton of Zürich itself puts best — slide 3 of the Informationsveranstaltung of 25.08.2025: «Nutzung einer etablierten Standard-Software, die auch in anderen Kantonen eingesetzt wird.» (use of an established standard software that is also in use in other cantons). At the delivery layer the two cantonal installations differ in two substantive fields: customization: 'ow' versus 'ar' and canton: 'ow' versus 'ar'. At the rule layer the difference is, as the next chapter shows, 42 of 1'432 rules; at the submission layer it is large. In between, in the product, it comes down to those two fields: customization and canton.

Two smaller observations from the same file, both precise and both left uncommented: adminBackendBaseUri points to clevertax-ow-admin.ilz.local — the administration side of the same product sits on a non-routable name. And the language field reads availableLanguages: 'de' in the Obwalden installation and availableLanguages: 'de' in the Appenzell one — both cantons are German-speaking. The standard carries the language field «Deutsch (Original), Französisch (Übersetzung)» (German (original), French (translation)), and the taxonomy has four language entry points; whether further languages are shipped, and where, the two configuration files do not say.

What the head start did not buy

Four tax periods in production is a long time. What came of it can be set out as a list — and so can what did not.

No public specification. In four years exactly one technical document about the mechanism has become public: a Herstellerhandbuch from 2018 that names no canton, no eCH, no Steuererklärung, no filing, no transmission, and no interface. The one party it names is an «Empfänger» (recipient), to whom a PDF is to be «zuzustellen» (delivered). The delivery itself the canton supplies, in one sentence on a web page. A further prediction follows, one that is not in the numbered list of the closing chapter because it is drawn more narrowly: A public technical specification of the format that an Obwalden portal accepts — with format, version, and validation — does not exist before 31.12.2026. Class: threshold-by-date. Grade: B; the rubric caps it there, however strong the argument. Falsifier: Obwalden, Appenzell Ausserrhoden, or the SSK publish a format specification, a list of accepted file types, or a validation rule set before that date.

No independence from the PDF. See above: four years, zero cases.

No third-party channel. The Appenzell Anleitung puts the cantonal picture in half a sentence: «Falls der ERP-Anbieter keine E-Bilanz anbietet oder Sie ohne E-Bilanz fortfahren möchten, können Sie mit einem Klick auf Steuererklärung anlegen weiterfahren.» (if the ERP provider does not offer an E-Bilanz, or you wish to continue without an E-Bilanz, you can carry on with a click on Steuererklärung anlegen). The picture holds exactly two states — the accounting system produces an E-Bilanz, or there is none. A third party that produces one does not appear. That is the demand side of the gate Part 3 found on the supply side, where the body that carries the transmission network writes in its own specification that, for private Deklarationslösungen, it would first be necessary that «zuerst die vertraglichen Grundlagen geschaffen werden» (the contractual basis would first have to be created).

And last, the least comfortable of them: The canton that had the head start has left the path that gave it one. From the 2025 tax period Obwalden moves to eCH-0276. The signed PDF container of 2018 has arrived in a standard that does not speak of a signature once across its three main documents, and whose packaging rule calls for a ZIP. Whether the older artefact disappears as a filing route we do not predict here — the class would be category-disappearance, the grade would be C, and no canton has dated an expiry. We record it as an open question, not as a forecast.

So the head start bought Obwalden four years of operating experience that no other canton has, and an answer to the question of what the file looks like when it arrives. It did not buy a public specification, independence from the PDF, or a route for third parties. That is not a verdict on the one canton that has built something and named it — those three remain open, and they hang on the three gates from Part 3, not on the canton.

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