The Vaud Constitutional Court rejected the request of the so -called 12%popular initiative committee, which did not want its text and the tax shield to be linked. The reform of the tax shield will only be applied if the Vaud population refuses the initiative. The initiators, either the employers’ circles, will file an appeal to the Federal Court.
“By decision of July 30, 2025, the Constitutional Court rejected the request filed on January 9, 2025 aimed at defeating the link between the modification of the Communal Tax Act and the Popular Initiative ‘Reduction of taxes for all: restoring purchasing power to the middle class’,” said the Vaud government at the end of the day in a statement.
The Council of State says “take note of this decision”. An appeal to the Federal Court (TF) against the decision of the Constitutional Court can still be filed within 30 days based on the notification of the complete decision, including the those who are not yet available, it is specified. The government will then decide on the date of the vote on the so -called 12%initiative, which should not take place before 2026.
In a press release, taking note of the court’s decision, the initiative committee already announces that it will file this appeal to the TF. “This is a question of principle. We want to have an external vision of the canton,” Keystone-Ats Olivier Feller, director of the Vaudoise Immobilière Chamber (CVI) told Keystone.
Initiative maintained
Launched by the Vaudoise Chamber of Commerce and Industry (CVCI), the CVI and the Vaudois patronal federation (FPV), the text had been deposited in 2023 with 28,000 signatures (out of 12,000 necessary). It requires a 12% discount of the final cantonal income tax invoice.
At the start of the year, the employers’ circles had decided to maintain their initiative, despite the indirect counter-project proposed by the government and reworked by parliamentarians in the Grand Council in December 2024. Like the Council of State, the legislative had refused this initiative, paving the way for a popular ballot. In Parliament, only the UDC and a few PLR deputies had supported the initiative. All the other parties had expressed themselves against.
It was during the examination and debates on the 2025 budget that parliamentarians finally opted for a cumulative drop of 7%of cantonal income tax by 2027. It is more than the indirect counter-project of the Council of State (5%), but therefore less than the initiative of employers (12%). The last word will come back to the population, which will therefore have to decide between the project validated by the Grand Council and the so -called 12%initiative.
“Breakdown in freedom of voting”
The request filed with the Vaud Constitutional Court concerned the decision of the Grand Council during its meeting of December 17, when the deputies adopted a legislative revision aimed at strengthening the protection provided by the tax shield, a mechanism to prevent tax from becoming confiscatory.
They had made it depend on the entry into force of this legislative revision of the rejection of the popular initiative of 12%. The initiative committee “continues to consider that the link created by the Grand Council constitutes a serious attack on freedom of voting”.
“The citizen favorable both to the reform of the tax shield and on the popular initiative is in fact in the impossibility of faithfully expressing his will. To say yes to the initiative, that is automatically no to the reform of the tax shield. And to say yes to the reform of the tax shield, the citizen has no choice but to refuse the popular initiative”, he recalls in his press release.
The purpose of the request to the Constitutional Court of the Cantonal Court was to have this artificial link created by the Grand Council canceled, according to him. In vain therefore, at this judicial stage.
This article was published automatically. Source: ATS