Fi­nances & Taxes

Com­pet­i­tive Tax Pol­icy

Thanks to a func­tion­ing com­pe­ti­tion at the level of the can­tons and mu­nic­i­pal­i­ties, Switzer­land is now a tax-at­trac­tive coun­try for com­pa­nies and pri­vate in­di­vid­u­als alike. But this sig­nif­i­cant ad­van­tage is not set in stone. The world­wide com­pe­ti­tion be­tween lo­ca­tions and the in­ter­na­tional pres­sure on the Swiss tax sys­tem have in­creased con­sid­er­ably in re­cent years. This is why we also ad­vo­cate for a sim­pli­fied VAT and for tax cuts that ben­e­fit no just cer­tain sec­tors but the en­tire econ­omy.  

Healthy Pub­lic Fi­nances

The Swiss na­tional debt is fairly mod­er­ate com­pared to many other coun­tries. This is at least partly the re­sult of the debt brake, an in­stru­ment that was in­tro­duced to force po­lit­i­cal de­ci­sion mak­ers not to be­come light­headed when the going is good in order to make sure that basic gov­ern­ment ser­vices re­main as­sured even in hard times. This is one rea­son why Switzer­land was one of few coun­tries to re­duce its debt de­spite the fi­nan­cial and eco­nomic cri­sis. We there­fore sup­port an ex­pan­sion of the debt brake prin­ci­ple. Es­pe­cially in the so­cial in­sur­ance sec­tor, Switzer­land will not be able to go for­ward with­out in­tro­duc­ing such a rule.