Overview of the tax law decisions of the Swiss Federal Administrative Court published between 13 - 19 June 2022:
- Judgment of 10 November 2021 (A-4667/2020, A-4679/2020): Customs; obligation to pay in arrears; preferential clearance; In the present case, the buses entered Switzerland without being declared and thus illegally. Art. 19 para. 2 letter b ZG is therefore applicable. The fact that they were reported to customs after the illegal import is not decisive. The FCA was therefore justified in applying Article 19(2)(b) of the ZG and paying customs duty on the vehicles at the normal rate. By transferring the 32 vehicles without carrying out proper border customs clearance and subsequently wrongly paying customs duty at the preferential rate, an unlawful advantage was obtained. The objective facts of customs evasion (Art. 118 of the Customs Act) are thus fulfilled; dismissal of the complaint by the taxpayer; decision confirmed by the Federal Supreme Court.
- Judgment of 10 May 2022 (A-2346/2021): Customs duties; The purchase of lettuce and vegetables abroad for the subsequent feeding of the complainant's animals cannot be subsumed under the concept of goods in tourist traffic. In terms of customs law, the goods are therefore commercial goods which were rightly subject to customs duty. Dismissal of the appeal.
- Judgment of 27 April 2022 (A-3346/2020): AlkG; Distillery licence; Spirits tax; By order of 18. December 2019, the Federal Customs Administration withdrew in particular the contract distillery licence and the commercial distillery licence from the person liable to pay the duty and demanded the spirits tax; The person liable to pay the duty had repeatedly violated the conditions and requirements associated with the licences and thus the alcohol legislation; In particular, since 2016, he has not kept any alcohol accounting records at all on his activities as a commercial distiller, which serve as a basis for the tax declaration; The medical certificates attached to the objection and the appeal do not show that the complainant was incapacitated for the entire period during which he should have prepared or submitted the accounting records, tax warehouse declarations and production declarations. The lower instance was forced to make the assessment on the basis of its own findings and in part on a discretionary basis; The lower instance was correct in this case to base its assessment on the inventory, since the tax claim arises, among other things, when distilled water is transferred from the tax warehouse to free circulation under tax law; Dismissal of the appeal by the taxpayer; Appealed again to the Federal Supreme Court.
- Judgment of 22 April 2022 (A-2059/2021): Customs, value added tax (import tax); The taxpayer imported a tractor from Austria. At the time of the customs declaration, he submitted a purchase agreement for EUR 12,000. However, investigations by the BAZG (formerly EZV) revealed a value of EUR 32,000 for the imported tractor. The BAZG claimed the difference in import tax accordingly. The person liable to pay the tax complained to the Federal Administrative Court that the BAZG had used an incorrect basis of assessment for calculating the import tax. The Federal Administrative Court applies a three-stage verification scheme in connection with the obligation to pay in arrears pursuant to Art. 12 VStrR. It states that because of the existing doubts about the accuracy of the customs declaration and because no correct value information was available, the BAZG was in principle entitled under Art. 54 para. 4 MWSTG to make an assessment at its discretion (first stage). By determining the market value of the tractor on the basis of the original advertisement, the handwritten notes of the taxpayer and the bank and postal receipts (all found in the course of a house search), the BAZG dutifully estimated the assessment basis within the meaning of Art. 54 para. 4 VAT Act (second stage). If, as here, the requirements for a discretionary determination of the market value are fulfilled and if this does not clearly violate federal law, it is incumbent on the taxpayer to prove the incorrectness of the estimate (third stage). In the present case, the taxpayer fails to provide this proof. Dismissal of the appeal of the taxpayer.
Decisions in the area of administrative assistance.
Decisions are listed chronologically by publication date.
