Overview of the tax law decisions of the Swiss Federal Supreme Court published in the week of 5 - 11 June 2017.

  • Judgment of 9 May 2017 (2C_564/2016): State and communal taxes (Lucerne); tax liability; According to § 70 para. 1 lit. d StG/LU, parishes in the Canton of Lucerne are in principle tax-exempt, but only insofar as their assets and income serve church purposes. The development project to be assessed, with an investment volume of CHF 58 million and 110 sold / rented residential units, was arbitrarily qualified by the lower court as commercial real estate trading and not as mere asset management; dismissal of the appeal.
  • Judgment of 12 April 2017 (2C_839/2016, 2C_840/2016): Direct federal tax and cantonal and municipal taxes 2003 (St. Gallen); offsetting of benefits in kind as income from self-employment; the complainant was unable to provide evidence of fiduciary asset management for the purpose of renovating properties; The decisive point is whether the complainant can show, on the basis of the records of his business transactions, that he received the receipted amount handed over in cash on behalf of the company and used it for the payment of the property improvements; no indications of a contractual relationship are apparent; qualification of the cash inflow as income from self-employment; the complaint is dismissed.
  • Judgment of 22 May 2017 (2C_1173/2016): Cantonal taxes 2012 (Ticino); valuation of unlisted shares; the valuation according to the Praktiker method and the determination of the relevant parameters is not arbitrary.
  • Judgment of 22 May 2017 (2C_422/2017, 2C_423/2017): Rechtshilfe (Freiburg); a new decision of the lower instance on the occasion of a rejection decision may in principle be the subject of a new appeal, unless the grounds of the decision follow the recitals of the rejection authority; in the present case, the allegations made in the notice of appeal have already been adjudicated and are no longer accessible for a new assessment; hearing impairment for the same reason denied; dismissal of the appeal.
  • Judgment of 8 May 2017 (2C_586/2016): Partial revision of the Ordinance on Secondary Schools (amendment of 18 May 2016); tuition fees at the secondary school (Schwyz); abstract control of norms; the increase of CHF 200 from CHF 500 to CHF 700 in tuition fees at the cantonal secondary schools was contested-; the complaint was based on the infringement of the fundamental principles of the law on causal levies; it was questionable whether the contested provision had a sufficient legal basis and whether it complied with constitutional principles (in particular the principle of cost recovery and equivalence). The complainant essentially criticised the fact that the debt money was not used to finance the state school attended but to finance private secondary schools (cross-subsidisation), which meant that the causa was lacking and why the levy collected should not be qualified as a fee but as a tax (which did not come about in the legislative procedure provided for this purpose). Moreover, the school fees charged were not customary in Swiss comparison and were therefore unconstitutional. The Federal Supreme Court held that the fee charged is a consideration for the use of the state secondary school and is far below the actual cost of attending secondary school (or the actual benefit the complainant derives from attending school). According to the Federal Supreme Court, the complainant's attendance at a public secondary school also constitutes a causa for the levy, which means that it qualifies as a user charge and not as a tax. The Federal Supreme Court also held that the fee charged was in line with the principles of legality, cost recovery and equivalence under tax law. Nor could a violation of the constitutional requirement of legal equality be established. The appeal is dismissed.

Decisions are listed chronologically by publication date.

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