The Federal State And Local Tax System Of Switzerland

"Switzerland has recently witnessed an unprecedented level of tax treaty negotiations. Although this is a direct result of Switzerland's revised position regarding exchange of information, a number of contracting states have taken this opportunity to modify tax treaty benefits and/or clarify certain aspects of tax treaty interpretation and application. These are considered extensively in this edition. As Switzerland has steadily aligned itself with international principles of international taxation, the self-imposed anti-abuse rules for the application of tax treaties have become less relevant. Nevertheless, Swiss courts have become more creative in determining where there is and where there is not treaty abuse. As a result, the 1962 Abuse Decree is making way for a more complex basket of anti-abuse rules and regulations"--Foreword (page vii).

This volume contains a description of fiscal relations between levels of government and it provides a set of detailed tables for each country, with revenues split by 1) level of sub-central government; 2) OECD classification of taxes; and 3) category of tax autonomy.

Swiss citizens approve of their government and the way democracy is practiced; they trust the authorities and are satisfied with the range of services Swiss governments provide. This is quite unusual when compared to other countries. This open access book provides insight into the organization and the functioning of the Swiss state. It claims that, beyond politics, institutions and public administration, there are other factors which make a country successful. The authors argue that Switzerland is an interesting case, from a theoretical, scientific and a more practice-oriented perspective. While confronted with the same challenges as other countries, Switzerland offers different solutions, some of which work astonishingly well.

International Edition (Distribution in USA, Canada, Great Britain, Australia) Both the Federal Act on Direct Federal Taxation (DBG) as well as the Federal Act on the Harmonisation of Income Taxes of the Cantons and Communities (StHG) allow non-working foreign citizens with Swiss residency to benefit from a special kind of income and wealth taxation. This historically anchored regulation has attracted wealthy foreign citizens to take up residency in Switzerland and will likely continue to do so. For the first time in over 150 years of lump-sum taxation history this book gives a systematical and comprehensive overview on the revised regulations and includes several side effects of taxation. *** As lector, the manner of concentration to the topic, the comprehensive processing of the literature, as well as with the changing legal bases in the federal state, and in the cantons, appears to me as impressive. Indeed, this extremely successful master thesis is qualified for an award ceremony. It is because of this that Mr. Luethi received, from my side, the predicate summa cum laude. (Prof. Dr. Bernhard Zwahlen, President of the advisory board of the Swiss Institute of Taxation, Zurich) *** Carol Gregor Luethi has very extensively investigated lump-sum taxation. Beneath the historical and current developments he was not afraid to investigate the practice in the cantons, what is very meritorious as there partly exist large differencies. Also, for this topic, existing literature and judicature is seamlessly integrated into his analysis. So far, only one scientifical work that dealed in a related depth with lump-sum taxation in Switzerland, existed, which is namely the one of Prof. Marco Bernasconi from 1983. Already with the introduction of the StHG but with the thigthening of lump-sum taxation more than ever this existing work is outdated. Carol Gregor Luethis scientific work is closing this gap. His substantiated investigation even goes beyond existing work, with side glance

This Selected Issues paper and Statistical Appendix compares two alternative time series approaches to analyzing Switzerland’s recent business cycle experience: first, the traditional “smooth-trend-plus-cycle approach,” which envisages observed output growth as fluctuating around a relatively smooth potential output growth path; and, second, the more recently developed “regime change approach,” which views business cycles as shifts between “high-growth” states (expansions) and “slow-growth” states (recessions) of the economy. The paper also examines Switzerland’s monetary policy framework, and describes the challenges to the Swiss tax system.