The passport as a head tax

The figures

What a passport costs

At home the adult passport costs 145 francs and is valid for ten years, the combined offer with an identity card 158 francs. At a Swiss representation abroad it is 149 francs (164 euros) including postage, the combination 166 francs. In Bucharest the charge is 820 lei.

On top come costs that appear in no fee table: the journey to the representation, often hundreds of kilometres, one or two days of lost earnings and the overnight stay. Anyone living in Switzerland drives to the cantonal passport office. Anyone living abroad travels to the capital.

The comparison

More expensive than any EU state

The chart shows the fee for an ordinary adult passport in the holder's own country. The median of the 27 EU states is about 49 francs. Switzerland charges 145 francs - roughly three times as much, and more than any single one of the 27. Only Australia is dearer. The currency can be switched.

The comparison is drawn conservatively. It sets the Swiss domestic fee against domestic fees elsewhere. Anyone applying at a representation abroad pays more in Switzerland, and in several EU states too - the gap remains.

The question

Is the Swiss passport that much better?

A high price would be justified if the document did more. The usual yardstick is the Henley Passport Index: how many destinations the passport opens without a visa applied for in advance. In the 2026 index Singapore leads with 192 destinations - and charges 70 Singapore dollars for it, about 45 francs. The Swiss passport opens 185 destinations and costs 145 francs.

Three times the price for seven destinations fewer. Australia, with the highest fee in the world, reaches 182 destinations. The other way round, the German passport opens as many destinations as the Swiss one and costs barely half.

So the fee does not measure the quality of the document. It measures what a state charges its citizens for confirming that they belong to it.

Why this is a head tax

The same for everyone, whatever they earn

A head tax is a charge per person, the same amount for everyone, with no relation to income. That is exactly how the passport fee works. It falls due every ten years, separately for each family member, and it is the same for an apprentice as for a chief executive.

A family of four pays about 420 francs for one set of passports, with two adults and two children, and for the children again every five years. Anyone who loses a passport or has one stolen pays the full amount again.

A passport is not optional. Without one there is no travel outside Europe, no residence permit, no bank account, no employment contract abroad. A charge on something one is required to hold is not a fee for a service, it is a tax on belonging.

The Fifth Switzerland

838,600 people, a single tariff

At the end of 2025, 838,600 Swiss citizens were registered with a representation abroad, more than ever before. 24 per cent of them are over 65, another 21 per cent are children. A year earlier the figure was 826,700; it keeps growing, most recently by 1.4 per cent after 1.6 per cent the year before. All of them pay the same fee.

But they do not earn Swiss wages. Anyone working in Romania, Portugal or Thailand earns the local rate. Anyone living on an AHV pension, often a minimum pension, has a fixed amount each month. For these people a fee of 149 francs is not the same thing as for someone on a Swiss monthly salary - it is the same price against an entirely different income.

And they need the passport more often than anyone else: for the residence permit, for work, for every authority in the host country. For them the document is not a travel paper, it is the daily basis of everything.

Not every Swiss abroad lives in a country with Swiss incomes - and even where they do, the price would not be justified. The passport should be free, as a service of the state to its citizens.

A document is a service, not a source of revenue