Overview of the tax law decisions of the Swiss Federal Supreme Court published between 31 January - 6 February 2022.

  • Judgment of 23 December 2021 (2C_198/2020): visitor's tax (holiday flats), appeal against the visitor's tax regulations of the municipality of Leukerbad of 1 January 2020; the method used by the municipality to determine the average occupancy rate of holiday flats is not an arbitrary implementation of cantonal law; dismissal of the appeal.
  • Judgment of 19 January 2022 (2C_461/2021): State and municipal taxes 2017 (Valais); in dispute is whether A. AG had the status of a holding company in 2017. In the view of the complaining tax office, the lower instance wrongly found that the requirements for the protection of good faith were met. Indeed, they claim that they never expressly assured A. AG that it would benefit from a privileged holding company status. Since the tax office never expressly assured the respondent that it would grant it privileged holding company status for the 2017 tax period, the cumulative conditions of the good faith protection claim are not met. Appeal of the tax office upheld.
  • Judgment of 11 January 2022 (2F_36/2021): Staats- und Gemeindesteuern 2017 (Aargau); The legal institution of revision is not available for carrying out a legal review. Among the statutorily exhaustive grounds for revision, there is no indication that the interpretation and/or application of the law can be reviewed by way of revision. The application for revision is unfounded and must therefore be dismissed.
  • Ruling of 28 December 2021 (2C_199/2020): State and municipal taxes (Solothurn) and direct federal tax 2015; making a purchase to finance a bridging pension for the period between early retirement and the regular AHV age has no influence on the amount of the retirement or pension capital. From a tax point of view, this means that the contribution at issue in this case is not used to accumulate pension capital which can then be drawn as a lump sum with privileged taxation, but is used to finance a benefit which can only be drawn as a pension and is taxed at the standard rate. The danger of abuse, which Art. 79b para. 3 BVG seeks to counteract, does not exist in the present constellation. The taxpayer's appeal is upheld and the matter is referred back to the tax office.
  • Judgment of 29 December 2021 (2C_636/2020): Kurtaxe Leukerbad; The taxpayers complain that the municipality failed to take into account that children under six years of age are fully exempt from the visitor's tax and children under 16 years of age are half exempt when assessing the visitor's tax for their three holiday flats. They argue that owners without children on the one hand and families with children on the other are treated equally despite the inequality. Thus, the principle of equality of rights was violated. The Federal Supreme Court stated that Art. 8 para. 1 of the Federal Constitution does not grant children and adolescents (or their parents) the right to be exempted from the resort tax if, as in this case, it can be assumed that they use the relevant facilities and services to a comparable extent as persons over 16 years of age; dismissal of the taxpayers' appeal.

Non-occurrence:

Decisions are listed chronologically by publication date.

Tax topics covered in this post:
International Tax
Treaties
Other Taxes
Profit Tax
Capital Tax
Income Tax
Wealth Tax