Legal, but problematic
How early tax can become a tax tip
Pascal Broulis proposes to reduce the delay for reimbursements. BUT: Limit the insecurity that the maneuver poses on federal finances.
Senator PLR Pascal Broulis is the former finance minister of the canton of Vaud.
Yvain Genevay/Tamedia
- By playing on the repayment of early tax, taxpayers can obtain more advantageous interest rates.
- The Confederation currently provides 29.6 billion for any reimbursements.
- Senator Pascal Broulis (PLR) offers to reduce deadlines to secure the federal budget.
From 2015 and at 2022the Swiss National Bank (BNS) has introduced negative interest rates. Its objective was to dissuade the influx of foreign capital and thus fight against the fort. But the measure also impacted the savers, who saw their accounts report very little, or even nothing.
So much for theory, because in practice, a parade exists so that your assets continue to be advantageous: taking advantage of the remuneration offered by the Confederation by playing on the reimbursement of early tax.
A tip that can however pose insecurity problems with federal finances, as evokes Senator Pascal Broulis (PLR/VD) in a postulate. But before looking at this case, let’s take the demonstration from the start.
What is the early tax?
Anticipated tax is a Swiss specificity. It is a source tax which aims to prevent tax evasion and guarantee that income is well declared. The latter is refundable if the person or the company correctly compiles their tax return. The legal deadline is three years. After this CAP, the money goes into public funds.
Natural persons must take the process with their canton; Legal persons, with the Confederation, via the Federal Administration of Contributions (AFC). To request reimbursement in the event of a domicile or siege abroad, it is necessary that a double taxation agreement or international agreement provides for it.
It is therefore by playing on this period of three years that it is possible to counter negative interest rates. “Some companies or investors are waiting for as long as possible to request reimbursement of early tax to benefit from the more advantageous rate proposed by the Confederation,” explains Pascal Broulis, which specifies that almost nearly 29.6 billion are brought to provision for this purpose in the accounts of the Confederation (at 31.12.2024). A sum to be related to the federal budget which is around 85 billion.
An early tax problem already mentioned by Ueli Maurer
Is this tip often used? Difficult to say. But in 2018while the former Minister of Finance Ueli Maurer presented much more black accounts than expected, this question had caught attention.
This problem related to early tax had already been mentioned on the sidelines of the presentation of the 2018 accounts by the Minister of Finance of the time, Ueli Maurer.
Tamedia AG
We were then in the middle of a negative rate. The early tax had – in 2017 – reported 8.2 billion and not 6.2, as expected. The Federal Finance Department explained that the back -ups had been stronger than expected. At the same time, the reimbursements had dropped. “We assume that companies, given the context of negative interests, wait as much as possible before claiming their money from the taxman,” we can read in the reports of the time.
For Pascal Broulis, such behaviors can pretext federal finances. “These billions pending represent an insecurity for the Confederation which does not know if these amounts will be recovered or if it can allocate them to other tasks.”
It must be said that the sums are sometimes colossal. End of June, «Blick» revealed the case of a German taxpayer who claimed 2.4 billion. If the reimbursement was not finally done due to the gap in the documentation, the amount had been provisioned by the AFC.
In his postulate, Pascal Broulis would like to know if it is possible to shorten this period of the right to reimbursement of early tax. He also asked to examine whether other deadlines provided for by tax laws could be reduced to increase security you budget fédical.
According to Pascal Broulis, shortening the reimbursement period would improve the security of federal finances.
Yvain Genevay/Tamedia
The senator still wants to know if this reduction could have impact on the needs of companies in connection with their obligations related to the holding of the accounts. Finally, he suggests providing that in the event of negative interest rates, the remunerative interest proposed by the Confederation are also negative.
In Switzerland, since the beginning of this year, the remunerative interest rate has been set at 0.75%, while that BNS is 0%.
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