BERN: The Swiss Federal Department of Finance said that it is forging ahead with work on a new corporate tax proposal, named “tax proposal 17” (TP17).
A steering committee held its first meeting on March 2. It is led by Federal Councillor Ueli Maurer and comprises members from the government and cantons.
The group agreed the timetable for TP17. In March, hearings will be arranged with the political parties, cities, and communes, national churches, and associations. These hearings will determine the next steps to be taken.
The new proposal must then be submitted to the Federal Council in June.
According to the Finance Department, “The swift implementation desired by all sides in order to maintain Switzerland’s competitiveness leaves a relatively small amount of leeway, but it also offers the opportunity to involve cities and communes in the work from the outset.”
It has been less than a month since the Government lost a referendum on the Corporate Tax Reform III package, which would have abolished a range of special tax arrangements for status companies in an effort to meet evolving international tax standards on harmful tax competition.
Specifically, the package had proposed the abolition of certain reduced taxation arrangements for holding, domiciliary, and mixed companies. It also proposed giving the cantons the option of introducing a special patent box regime for intellectual property income, and of applying a higher deduction for research and development expenditure.
