Switzerland (Canton Zürich) Debts Register (Schuldenverzeichnis)

This file is the source-review record for this document version, per the manual-source-review-v1 practice.

Current claim

• status: draft
• verification.method: manual-source-review-v1
• verification.lastVerifiedAt: 2026-07-09
• maturity.level: structural-reference

Why this cycle picked up the Schuldenverzeichnis

This is the recurring "GovSchema Standard Research" cycle (GOV-1896). The prior cycle (GOV-1889), which authored the Liegenschaftenverzeichnis (real-estate register), left two companion schedules as the remaining open backlog list: Schuldenverzeichnis (debts register) and Hilfsblatt A/B/G (self-employment worksheets). CATALOG.md's own "Known Gaps" list repeated this open list verbatim after GOV-1889 merged. This cycle's reconnaissance confirmed the Schuldenverzeichnis is a genuine, current, unauthenticated, flat (non-AcroForm), single-page PDF, and picked it over Hilfsblatt A/B/G: the latter is, in substance, three separate self-employment bookkeeping worksheets (Forms 328/329 for Hilfsblatt A — with and without kaufmännische Buchhaltung, 330 for Hilfsblatt B, 331 for Hilfsblatt G), each aimed at a materially narrower filer population (self-employed and agricultural filers) and each its own distinct multi-page accounting form, which does not fit this registry's established one-schedule-per-cycle pattern as cleanly as a single, simple, broadly-applicable schedule does. This document closes the Schuldenverzeichnis gap specifically. It does not open a new vertical or jurisdiction — Switzerland remains at 2 of 6 verticals (DMV, Taxes) — but it further deepens the Taxes vertical's coverage of an already-open jurisdiction, leaving Hilfsblatt A/B/G as the sole remaining open backlog candidate (now flagged as, in substance, three separate future sub-cycle candidates rather than one).

Sources examined

• Document (id, version): ch/zh/sta/schuldenverzeichnis / 1.0.0
• Spec version: GovSchema 0.3.0
• Authority: Kanton Zürich — Finanzdirektion, Kantonales Steueramt Zürich (same authority as the main return and its five other companion schedules; this form's own printed issuer is "StA Form. 355").
• Primary source: https://www.zh.ch/content/dam/zhweb/bilder-dokumente/themen/steuern-finanzen/steuern/natuerlichepersonen/jahrunabhaengig/est-formulare/355_schulden_zh_2020_def.pdf — "StA Form. 355 (2020) 12.20 — Schuldenverzeichnis," fetched directly (HTTP 200, %PDF-1.5, 54,514 bytes, no /Encrypt, no login/CAPTCHA/WAF gate) from the same zh.ch tax-forms listing page (https://www.zh.ch/de/steuern-finanzen/steuern/steuern-natuerliche-personen/steuererklaerung-natuerliche-personen.html) every prior CH-ZH cycle has used.
• A note on this form's year-independent URL, matching the Liegenschaftenverzeichnis pattern. Like ch/zh/sta/liegenschaftenverzeichnis (and unlike the three yearly-repackaged schedules — Wertschriften- und Guthabenverzeichnis, Berufsauslagen, Versicherungsprämien, Aus- und Weiterbildung, each hosted at a .../2025/est-formulare/... path with "2025" printed in its own cover title), this form is hosted at a year-independent .../jahrunabhaengig/est-formulare/... path, its own printed template dated "StA Form. 355 (2020) 12.20," and its cover page carries no tax year at all — instead, the header prints a standalone 4-box "◂ Jahr" entry field, the same shape as the Liegenschaftenverzeichnis header. This document accordingly models the 'Jahr' box as its own required taxYear field, for the same reason disclosed in the Liegenschaftenverzeichnis's own VERIFICATION.md: the tax year is genuinely filer-entered data on this form, not an assumption baked into the schema version.
• A note on the itemized table's per-row text-extraction artifact. pdfjs-dist text extraction returned each of the 30 table rows' two money columns as an identical repeating digit string ("113213211" in the "Schuld am 31. Dezember" column, "13213211" in the "Schuldzinsen" column) rather than a distinct per-row reference code. Rendering the page to PNG (node-canvas, 3x and 6x scale) confirmed this is a text-layer artifact of the decorative notched digit-entry-box glyphs printed in every blank cell (the same box-drawing font used for the AHVN13 and Jahr entry boxes elsewhere on this form, and for the entry boxes across every other CH-ZH companion schedule this registry has modelled) — not a real per-row box-reference code. This is a materially simpler table than the Wertschriften- und Guthabenverzeichnis's own 24-row table (whose Zugang/ Abgang date columns do carry real per-row codes, 2305-01..24/2309-01..24): this form's two money columns carry no per-row codes of any kind, only the two headline Total boxes (3200, 3201) at the foot of the table. Confirmed by direct visual inspection of the rendered page (both at 3x overview scale and a 6x/header-region crop) — every row is a plain blank box-ruled entry line, with the creditor-name/address column to its left printed as ordinary ruled lines (no box-ruled digit-entry font at all), consistent with free-text entry.
• Companion Wegleitung, examined for rule confirmation and a worked specimen: https://www.zh.ch/content/dam/zhweb/bilder-dokumente/themen/steuern-finanzen/steuern/natuerlichepersonen/2025/est-wegleitungen/305_Wegleitung_ZH_2025_HA%20bf%20DEF.pdf — the same 40-page "Wegleitung zur Steuererklärung 2025" every prior CH-ZH cycle has used, fetched the same way (HTTP 200, 1,497,565 bytes, 40 pages, %PDF-1.7). A full-text scan for "Schuldenverzeichnis" / "Schuldzinsen" / "Schulden" matched PDF pp.2, 3, 10, 14-23, 31, 37, 38. Of these:
  • p.31 ("Beilagen zur Steuererklärung") lists Formular «Schuldenverzeichnis» under "Weitere Beilagen" — attachments required only when the corresponding deduction/asset is actually claimed — confirming this schedule is filed as a genuine attachment, not merely an internal worksheet.
  • p.37 ("Abzüge und Einkommensberechnung") carries the main return's own line-12 entry, 12. Schuldzinsen (soweit nicht schon unter Ziff. 2 abgezogen) Schuldenverzeichnis 250, matching the main return schema's own debtInterestStateTax/debtInterestFederalTax field descriptions verbatim (box 250, "to the extent not already deducted under income line 2"). This page also carries the Wegleitung's own fully worked household specimen (Muster-Meister Felix und Regula), rendered to PNG to resolve the jumbled specimen digits: box 250 shows CHF 8'000 of debt interest, printed identically in both the Staatssteuer and Bundessteuer columns.
  • p.38 ("Das Vermögen") carries the main return's own line-34 entry, 34. Schulden Schuldenverzeichnis 470, matching the main return schema's own debtsWealth field description verbatim (box 470). The same rendered specimen shows box 470 = CHF 750'000 (subtracted from a CHF 1'208'373 gross-asset total at box 460 to reach a CHF 458'373 taxable-wealth figure at box 490).
  • The specimen's identical CHF 8'000 entry in both the Staatssteuer and Bundessteuer columns of Ziffer 12 is the direct evidentiary basis for this document's totalPrivateDebtInterest field description: this schedule produces one combined interest figure that the filer (or the online ZHprivateTax portal) transcribes unchanged into both of the main return's state- and federal-tax columns, unlike lines where state and federal law genuinely diverge (e.g. the main return's own child/ supported-person deductions, which print different Staatssteuer/ Bundessteuer amounts even in the same specimen).
  • No dedicated worked specimen of this exact form's own per-creditor row structure exists anywhere in the Wegleitung — the same class of negative finding the aus-und-weiterbildungskosten cycle (GOV-1882) made for Form 367 and the Liegenschaftenverzeichnis cycle (GOV-1889) made for Form 350. Confirmed by (1) a full-text scan for the literal footer string "StA Form. 355" across all 40 Wegleitung pages, which returns no match at all (unlike Form 350's own blank facsimile appearing on pp.14, 28-30) — this form's own reference facsimile is not reproduced anywhere in the Wegleitung, only its two headline transfer boxes (250, 470) as printed on the main return's own pp.37-38; and (2) a full-text and rendered-page scan for "Muster" co-occurring with "Schuld" across all 40 pages, which returns only these same two aggregate-transfer pages (37, 38), with no supporting Form-355-level breakdown of Gläubiger/Schuld/ Schuldzinsen anywhere. This negative finding is disclosed explicitly: this schema's own worked mock-data example (below) is independently constructed and hand-recomputed, not matched against an official specimen, though it deliberately uses a similar order of magnitude to the Wegleitung's own aggregate figures (a CHF 700,000 mortgage-plus-loan total, vs. the specimen's CHF 750,000) as a plausibility cross-check, not as a claim of matching any official worked example.
• Extraction method. pdfjs-dist (v3.11.174, legacy/build/pdf.js) text extraction with full (x, y) coordinates per text item, plus a pdfjs-dist per-page annotation check (page.getAnnotations(), filtered to subtype === 'Widget'). The check returned zero fillable widgets on the form's single page — the same flat, non-AcroForm, print/reference- facsimile shape as all five sibling companion schedules. The page was additionally rendered to PNG (pdfjs-dist + node-canvas, 3x scale for a full-page overview and 6x scale for a header-region crop) and visually cross-checked against the extracted text before any field name was assigned. This rendering pass is what resolved:
  • the exact header layout (AHVN13 with the "756" Swiss country-code prefix pre-printed plus 10 blank digit boxes, labelled "13-stellig"; a 4-digit "Jahr" box; and free-text Gemeinde/Name/Vorname fields) — field-for-field identical to the Liegenschaftenverzeichnis header;
  • the 30-row table's true shape (one free-text creditor-name/address column at left, two box-ruled whole-CHF money columns at right headed "Schuld am 31. Dezember" / "CHF ohne Rappen" and "Schuldzinsen" / "CHF ohne Rappen"), and the digit-box text-extraction artifact disclosed above;
  • the foot-of-table "Total Privatschulden / private Schuldzinsen" line (boxes 3200/3201) and the two printed transfer-arrow captions ("Zu übertragen in die Steuererklärung Seite 4, Ziffer 34" for box 3200; "Zu übertragen in die Steuererklärung Seite 3, Ziffer 12" for box 3201), confirming both destination lines on the main return without relying on the main return's own field descriptions alone.
• Retrieved / reviewed: 2026-07-09.
• Reviewer: GovSchema Engineering (Standards Engineer — initial authoring source review).

Scope decision: the 30-row creditor table collapsed to one free-text field

GovSchema v0.3 fields are flat: there is no array/nested-object element type yet (array/nested object are proposed only in GSP-0009, not accepted). The form's own creditor table has 30 printed rows, each linking a creditor's name/address to a year-end debt balance and an interest amount — genuinely unbounded cardinality in practice (a filer with more than 30 creditors would need to summarize or continue by other means, though — unlike its Wertschriften-und-Guthabenverzeichnis and Liegenschaftenverzeichnis siblings — this form's own printed page makes no reference to a dedicated continuation sheet for that case). Per this registry's established treatment of exactly this situation elsewhere, the whole table is collapsed into one creditorDebtDetails free-text field, with a full description of the values each entry is expected to carry.

Scope decision: no continuation-sheet modelling (unlike Wertschriften/Liegenschaften)

Both ch/zh/sta/wertschriften-und-guthabenverzeichnis and ch/zh/sta/liegenschaftenverzeichnis model explicit pass-through transfer fields for a continuation sheet (Beiblatt) used when a filer's holdings exceed the printed table's row count. This document does not model any such field: neither this form's own single page, nor the main return's own line 250/470 field descriptions, nor any of the 16 Wegleitung pages that mention "Schuldenverzeichnis"/"Schuldzinsen"/"Schulden" reference a Schuldenverzeichnis continuation sheet by name. This is disclosed as a confirmed absence, not an oversight: a filer with more than 30 creditors is outside this form's own designed scope, and no distinct GovSchema document exists to model a sheet that itself does not appear to exist.

Field-by-field source mapping

• Tax year ("◂ Jahr" box) → taxYear. See the dedicated note above on why this field exists on this schedule, matching the Liegenschaftenverzeichnis precedent.
• Household header (AHVN13/Gemeinde/Name/Vorname) → ahvn13RemainingDigits, gemeinde, name, vorname — the same header shape and field-naming convention as every other CH-ZH companion schedule this registry has modelled (collected once per household, not per person).
• Creditor inventory (the 30-row "Name, Vorname und Adresse des Gläubigers" / "Schuld am 31. Dezember" / "Schuldzinsen" table) → creditorDebtDetails. See scope decision above.
• Headline totals (boxes 3200, 3201) → totalPrivateDebt, totalPrivateDebtInterest. The first transfers directly onto the main return's own debtsWealth field (Ziffer 34); the second transfers onto both of the main return's debtInterestStateTax and debtInterestFederalTax fields (Ziffer 12) — confirmed by the Wegleitung's own worked specimen showing an identical value in both columns (see "Sources examined" above).

Mock-data test run

Per the issue's phase-3/phase-4 instruction to document field-level detail and test-run the schema with valid mock data, this document's fields were checked by hand against the schema's own validation constraints and against the conformance fixture, conformance/ch/zh/sta/schuldenverzeichnis/1.0.0/application-packet.json:

• taxYear = 2025 — within [2000, 2100]. OK.
• ahvn13RemainingDigits = "7891234560" — matches ^[0-9]{10}$ (10 digits). OK.
• gemeinde = "Winterthur", name = "Steiner", vorname = "Andrea" — within their respective maxLength constraints. OK.
• creditorDebtDetails — describes two creditors: (1) Zürcher Kantonalbank, a mortgage lender on the filer's self-occupied home in Winterthur, debt CHF 680,000, interest CHF 7,650; (2) Hans Meier, a private individual, personal loan, debt CHF 20,000, interest CHF 350. Within the 6000-character maxLength. OK.
• totalPrivateDebt = 700000 — verified: 680,000 + 20,000 = 700,000 (exact).
• totalPrivateDebtInterest = 8000 — verified: 7,650 + 350 = 8,000 (exact). This also matches the Wegleitung's own specimen figure at box 250 (CHF 8,000) exactly, by construction, as a plausibility check; the underlying two-creditor breakdown is independently authored, not copied from the specimen (which shows no such breakdown).

No documents[] array is defined on this schema (unlike its Liegenschaftenverzeichnis and Wertschriften siblings, which each gate a supporting-evidence attachment on a companion-transfer condition) — this form has no continuation sheet and no separate supporting-evidence attachment of its own beyond the schedule itself (the Wegleitung's p.31 checklist lists only "Formular «Schuldenverzeichnis»" as the attachment, which is this document in its entirety, not a further sub-attachment) — so there is no conditional-requirement rule to test, unlike the Liegenschaftenverzeichnis cycle's own requiredWhen scenario/negative-control pair.

Both registry validators were run against the schema document itself and pass:

``` $ node tools/validate.mjs registry/ch/zh/sta/schuldenverzeichnis/1.0.0/schema.json ok registry/ch/zh/sta/schuldenverzeichnis/1.0.0/schema.json

1/1 document(s) passed.

$ node tools/validate-ajv.mjs registry/ch/zh/sta/schuldenverzeichnis/1.0.0/schema.json ok registry/ch/zh/sta/schuldenverzeichnis/1.0.0/schema.json [v0.3]

1/1 document(s) validated against the meta-schema (ajv 2020-12). ```

tools/verify-sources.mjs was also run against this document's registry directory and confirms every cited URL is live and independently reachable:

``` $ node tools/verify-sources.mjs registry/ch/zh/sta/schuldenverzeichnis/1.0.0 verify-sources: checking 1 schema version directory...

verify-sources: 1 directory, 5 URLs checked, 0 warning(s), 0 allowlisted, all clear. ```

What is NOT modelled (out of scope), and why

• Per-row breakdown of the 30-row creditor table — collapsed into creditorDebtDetails. See scope decision above.
• A continuation sheet for creditors beyond the 30th row — no such sheet appears to exist for this form. See scope decision above.
• A declaration/signature block — like the Liegenschaftenverzeichnis, this form's single page carries no signature line, declaration statement, or "Ort und Datum" field of its own, confirmed by a full-text search of the extracted page content; the main return's own page-4 declaration already covers every attached schedule.
• Any office-only field.

Judgment calls

1. creditorDebtDetails collapses the creditor name/address, debt balance, and interest amount into one free-text field per creditor row, consistent with every other collapsed repeating table in this registry (Wertschriften' securitiesAndHoldingsDetails, Liegenschaften' propertyInventoryDetails, Berufsauslagen's private- vehicle commuting sub-table).
2. No continuation-sheet field is modelled, unlike the Wertschriften and Liegenschaften siblings. This is a disclosed absence-of-evidence finding, not a scope exclusion of an acknowledged sheet: no source examined this cycle (this form's own page, the main return, or the Wegleitung) references such a sheet by name.
3. totalPrivateDebtInterest's field description states it transfers to both the state- and federal-tax columns of the main return, based on the Wegleitung's own worked specimen showing an identical figure in both columns — a factual claim about this specific line's behavior, not a general rule about every Staatssteuer/Bundessteuer-columned line on the main return (several other lines, e.g. child/supported-person deductions, do diverge between the two columns in the same specimen).
4. Amounts are modelled as plain number fields in whole CHF, per the form's own "CHF ohne Rappen" column headers (explicit on this form, unlike the Liegenschaftenverzeichnis's plain "CHF" headers) and the rendered page's box-ruled, no-decimal-notch entry cells.
5. jurisdiction.level is subnational with subdivision: "CH-ZH", identical to the main return and its five other companion schedules.
6. taxYear is modelled as a required field, matching the Liegenschaftenverzeichnis precedent: this is one of only two of the six CH-ZH companion schedules hosted at a year-independent URL with a genuinely filer-entered tax-year box, rather than a year baked into the printed template.
7. No live submission was attempted — filing a real Swiss cantonal tax return attachment is a real legal act with a real cantonal tax authority, not a safe or reversible action to simulate against a live government process, consistent with this registry's standing discipline.

Access notes

No access blocks: zh.ch was reachable directly from this environment with plain curl for both this form and the Wegleitung — no TCP-level reset, WAF, or CAPTCHA gate encountered, consistent with every prior CH-ZH cycle's finding that zh.ch's own tax-forms domain is unblocked.

Scope and jurisdiction notes

• This is Switzerland's seventh Taxes-vertical document (a companion schedule to the main return, ch/zh/sta/steuererklaerung-natuerliche-personen), not a new vertical or jurisdiction; Switzerland remains at 2 of 6 verticals.
• id reuses the sta authority-directory segment (the same cantonal tax office) and the form's own official title, ASCII-folded, as its slug: schuldenverzeichnis.
• No edition member is used, consistent with this registry's existing treatment of the other CH-ZH annual tax-year-specific schedules — even though this particular form's own hosting path is year-independent, its content (the tax year a given filing covers) is still scoped by the filer-entered taxYear field, not by a schema-version edition axis.

Re-verification

Per the practice's cadence, nextReviewBy is set to 2027-01-09 (6 months), the same cadence as the main return and its other companion schedules. Because status remains draft, a future review should prioritize: confirming the next tax year's edition of the main return keeps the same box-reference numbering (250, 470, 3200, 3201) for this schedule, confirming this form's own year-independent hosting path and "Jahr" box convention persists, and re-screening whether Hilfsblatt A/B/G (the sole remaining CH-ZH companion-schedule gap, now understood to be three separate self-employment worksheets rather than one schedule) has become a tractable next candidate — most plausibly as three separate future sub-cycles rather than one combined effort.