At its meeting on 27 February 2017, the National Council approved (with certain amendments) a motion to reject the administrative practice of the Swiss Federal Tax Administration (FTA) envisaged from 2016 in connection with the adoption of the bill on the financing and expansion of railway infrastructure (Fabi), which would lead to additional income taxation for employed persons with a business vehicle.
According to a motion by Erich Ettlin (15.4259), the Federal Council should be instructed to instruct the FTA not to implement the administrative practice envisaged from 2016 onwards, which leads to additional income taxation of self-employed persons with a company car. There was no legal basis for this measure, and it would also lead to an enormous administrative burden with many open questions of application.
The motion cites the following justification: For the direct federal tax, the FTA intends that owners of business vehicles, in addition to the private share of 9.6 percent of the vehicle purchase price, must also pay tax as income on the costs of journeys between home and place of work that exceed CHF 3,000 (Fabi lump-sum commuter allowance limit). However, it is difficult for taxpayers to understand when effectively calculated travel costs are added to the existing private share lump sum. According to the FTA, the employee must calculate and declare the additional "income". On the other hand, according to the salary statement guidelines, the employer is obliged to certify all benefits on the salary statement, for business vehicle owners now also the number of days in field service. The implementation of this practice leads to considerable additional administrative work for employers, employees and the tax authorities. Employers who have to account for withholding tax for their employees will be severely affected, as the procedure for these cases is particularly complicated and some cantons only make offsets for the subsequent ordinary assessments. There is still a lot that is unclear. Employers were only informed about the procedure by the tax authorities late in 2015, but must already apply the new requirements from January 2016. Further clarifications and investigations are needed where no further information is required today. The regulation alone that the journey from the place of residence directly to the customer (in the case of sales representatives) does not count as a commute and that the corresponding information must be listed on the salary statement must be ensured in many cases by means of adjustments in the time recording programs and additional checks by the employer. It goes without saying that this creates not only a large administrative burden but also an undesirable source of error.
In its meeting of 27 January 2017, the National Council (second chamber) adopted the motion by 121 votes to 57 with 6 abstentions and with the following amendment: The Federal Council is instructed to propose the necessary legal changes so that at the administrative level, a share of the income from the use of a company vehicle for commuting is also compensated at the same rate as 9.6 percent of the vehicle purchase price for private use of the company vehicle.
The minutes of the National Council meeting are available here.
