Overview of the tax law decisions of the Swiss Federal Administrative Court published in the week of 21 - 27 September 2020.

  • Judgment of 3. May 2019 (BVGE 2019 I/7; A-956/2019): Withholding tax; Revision and reconsideration of a decision of the FTA; If appeal proceedings are pending before the Federal Administrative Court, new facts must be made valid within the scope of these proceedings and not by way of a revision of the decision of the lower court; If the facts of the case are delimited and concluded and the Federal Supreme Court has also made a decision on the merits, the revision of decisions of the first instance is no longer possible; In this case, only the revision of the decision concluding the proceedings is possible, dismissal of the appeal.
  • Judgement of 3 August 2020 (A-2153/2019): The subsequent levying of withholding tax on the basis of a payment in kind is lawful; among other things, the BVGer examines the statute of limitations of the withholding tax claim; no annual financial statements were submitted and no payments in kind were declared; it can therefore be assumed that the seven-year statute of limitations pursuant to § 212a of the Federal Law on Income Tax (BVGer) is not applicable. It can therefore be assumed that the seven-year limitation period under the VStrR begins to run six months and 30 days after the end of the relevant financial year; dismissal of the appeal; decision appealed to the Federal Supreme Court (see also our article of 23 August 2020).
  • Judgment of 19 February 2020 (A-2273/2019): Decision confirmed by the Federal Supreme Court; VAT irrelevance of a retroactive restructuring (see our contributions of 20 September 2020 and 1 March 2020).
  • Judgment of 10 September 2020 (A-5288/2018): aMWSTG; input tax deduction, no loss of tax; 1st quarter to 4th quarter 2009; VAT wrongly invoiced is shown and owed; in the present case, aMWSTV 45a cannot be invoked because there is no formal defect; dismissal of the taxpayers' complaint.
  • Judgment of 5 August 2020 (A-2905/2020): Decision appealed to the BGer; Decision to reject / import of works of art; In the present case, due to the rejection, the only thing left to be examined was whether a simulated commission relationship could be assumed also with regard to a "consignment agreement" between the complainant and the gallery (cf. already our contributions of 7 June 2020 and 3 February 2019); The Federal Administrative Court affirms the simulation; The appeal is dismissed, but is partially upheld with regard to the imposition of costs and compensation of the parties.
  • Judgment of 10 September 2020 (A-3244/2018): Customs duties; dismissal of the appeal.

Decisions in the field of administrative assistance:

Decisions are listed chronologically by publication date.

Tax topics covered in this post:
Withholding Tax
Value Added Tax (VAT)
Custom Duties
Treaties
International Tax