Overview of the tax law decisions of the Swiss Federal Supreme Court published in the week of 18 - 24 January 2021.

  • Judgment of 5 January 2021 (2C_339/2020): Direct Federal Tax and State and Municipal Taxes 2011-2014 (Valais); at issue here is, on the one hand, the deduction of losses incurred by the taxpayer in the context of his securities activity and, on the other hand, the timing of the taxation of the profits from the real estate activity. The taxpayer has no special knowledge of financial products and has only invested in a high-risk product, whereby he has only suffered losses for years and he has also not kept any accounts of his securities activity, which means that a self-employed activity must be denied. In the present case, the conclusion of the purchase agreement is considered to be the time of taxation of profits from the sale of real estate. Merely because his business partners were (wrongly) taxed at a different time, no right can be derived from the wrong. Dismissal of the taxpayer's appeal.
  • Judgment of 28 December 2020 (2C_1002/2020): Value added tax, tax periods 2007-2012; In the present case, the Appeals Authority rightly did not allow a period of grace for additional substantiation. The transfer of the taxi business was clearly a legal transaction between two companies, which were in turn held by related parties (father and daughter). The alleged cluelessness about the business transactions at the level of the transferor, therefore, comes across as contrived and highly implausible. Dismissal of the taxpayer's complaint.
  • Judgment of 5 January 2021 (2C_888/2019): tax jurisdiction decision; intercantonal double taxation; as a result of low infrastructure or subordinate activities in the canton of Schwyz, the company managing a cycling team is in fact managed and taxable in the canton of Ticino; dismissal of the taxpayer's appeal.

Non-entry decisions / administrative assistance:

Decisions are listed chronologically by publication date.

Tax topics covered in this post:
Income Tax
Value Added Tax (VAT)
Profit Tax