I've never founded a company in Switzerland but it didn't seem that hard, talking with people who did. As an individual most of the things I've had to do (residence permit, taxes...) are also quite straightforward.
I've founded two. It's much harder than it needs to be, although whether it's worse than Germany or Delaware or whatever I'm not sure. The prevalence of quasi-mandatory middlemen whose only task is dealing with the complexity is a bit of a giveaway that it's not easy.
Individual interactions with the government are also frustratingly bureaucratic. The prevalence of fetch quests is a lowlight. Different departments don't talk to each other, maybe they think email is insecure or something, or maybe because every interaction with the government comes with a 30-90CHF+ fee. So I often find myself manually schlepping rubber-stamped documents from one part of the canton to another and paying for the privilege, something that is much better done by computers. A whole set of processes work like this and must be wide open to fraud.
Sometimes departments even expect you to send memos around to themselves. An example of one recent interaction that typifies the whole experience (loosely translated to English):
Clerk: You're late, you will have to pay a 50 CHF fine.
Me: <checks watch> I'm right on time and have been waiting to be called forward for 15 minutes.
Clerk: You were supposed to come within two weeks of the invitation, which was sent 3.5 weeks ago.
Me: I booked this appointment on the same day I received the invitation, which was also the same day it was sent. And today was the first available appointment slot.
Clerk: It says here on your invitation <gestures to fine print> that if you can't come within two weeks, you have to write us a letter to tell us why not.
Me: Ahhmmm.... to double check I'm not misunderstanding this, you expected me to write you a letter informing you your own calendar is full, a fact you already knew? And now you're fining me for not doing that?
Clerk: Yes. Will that be card or cash?
My wife went through something very similar in the last couple of years where her permit expired during COVID because she couldn't get the bureaucracy to pay any attention. She filled out the forms on time, was told to wait. She phoned them, was told her case was in progress, COVID delays etc and she should wait. Eventually she told me about this, we went to the office in person and was informed there was no record of any such interactions and she wasn't even in the system at all. Clerk acted like this was clearly our fault. I told the clerk to please make a record of the fact we'd been there and tried to resolve the situation in person, "I don't have permission to make notes on her file". OK, maybe that's why there are no records of previous interactions then? "Can't say". After that I decided that from now on every interaction is via registered mail. Make them think we're collecting evidence for a legal dispute. Things were suddenly resolved.
I'd love to say the above were unusual but it's really not. Every interaction with the Swiss government I've had tends to be like this if it isn't already digitized: it will be slow, it will be expensive, and it will contain at least one infuriatingly unreasonable gotcha that makes it even slower and more expensive. If a process is digitized on the other hand then it's going to be much better, Switzerland seems to have pretty competent government IT overall (when it exists).
