Overview of the tax law decisions of the Swiss Federal Supreme Court published in the week of 18 - 24 June 2018.

  • Judgment of 6 June 2018 (2C_995/2017): Direct federal tax and cantonal and communal taxes 2013 (St. Gallen); in accordance with Art. 45 para. 1 lit. c StG/SG, a child deduction does not apply in particular if the parents are no longer mainly responsible for maintenance because the child is not or no longer mainly dependent on the support of the parents due to its own income and financial circumstances; in the present case, the complainants did not dispute their daughter's maintenance on the main issue because the daughter paid considerably more than half of her maintenance costs herself with her own earned income; dismissal of the complainants' appeal.
  • Judgment of 31 May 2018 (2C_1033/2017): Direct Federal Tax and State and Municipal Taxes 2015 (Zurich); the granting of a workroom deduction as a deduction of professional expenses requires that the taxpayer regularly carries out a substantial part of his professional work at home (cf. The employer's confirmation that the complainant works under the "smart working" concept provides evidence that the employer does not make a workplace available to him at all times: in addition to the workplace "ratio" of 0, employees are apparently also entitled to a workspace.8, the employer herself assumes that in some cases work must also be done outside the home, on the way to work or in private rooms at home; neither the employer's confirmation nor the description of the "smart working" concept contains sufficient evidence that the work carried out at home - due to the limited number of workplaces under the "smart working" concept and not due to the personal convenience of the complainant - reaches a level which would make the granting of a workroom deduction appear necessary; rejection of the complainants' complaint.
  • Judgment of 5 June 2018 (2C_629/2017): State and municipal taxes 2008 (Aargau); the complainant runs a sole proprietorship as a self-employed person and is also involved in a construction consortium; he booked a loan in the amount of CHF 650,000 as business and claimed loss-related write-offs in the amount of CHF 550,000 on it; in the present case, the complainant does not succeed in showing the connection of this loan with his business activity or with the construction consortium (E. 3.1.2); for this reason, the Federal Supreme Court dismissed the appeal.
  • Judgment of 6 June 2018 (2C_296/2018): State and Municipal Taxes 2015 (Zurich); tax sovereignty; confirmation of the case law according to which the relations of an unmarried person to the place of work come to the fore in practice if the person has exceeded the age of thirty and/or has been staying at the same foreign place of work without interruption for more than five years (E. 2.2.3). If the taxpayer also spends most of the weekends at the family's place of residence (Valais), this is not sufficient, in view of his age and the many years of residence at the place of work (Zurich), to remove the natural presumption provided for by case law. Even taking into account the fact that this is more of a borderline case, the opposite outwardly perceptible circumstances are not sufficient to assume that the family residence for tax purposes is in the family town (Valais) (E. 2.3.5).

Non-occurrence decisions / inadmissible complaints:

Decisions are listed chronologically by publication date.

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