Overview of the tax rulings of the Swiss Federal Administrative Court published between October 7 - 13, 2024:
- Judgment of September 20, 2024 (A-205/2023; A-207/2023): VAT (2015-2019); The main point in dispute and to be examined was whether the appellant GmbH and its owner (sole proprietorship) were rightly registered as taxable persons and whether they were entrepreneurially active - in particular whether the criteria of self-employment and external appearance under their own name were met in the tax periods concerned. The present proceedings were triggered by a Federal Supreme Court ruling (concerning the appellants) regarding direct taxes, which held that the appellants were not self-employed as a result of pass-through taxation and therefore did not exist from a direct tax perspective. Based on this, the appellants demanded the retroactive abolition of the VAT obligation. The FAC affirmed the VAT taxable status of the two appellants in the present case. The conceptual harmonization (of "self-employment") had its limits in the different purposes of the tax types and the qualification from a direct tax and/or social security law perspective was therefore not decisive for VAT, but only (but still) had an indicative effect. Furthermore, in the absence of tax avoidance, there was no possibility of recourse in the present case. In the present case, a misunderstanding also made it necessary to reverse a correction made by the FTA (offsetting GmbH and credit note for sole proprietorship). Essentially, the appeal of the limited liability company was dismissed and the appeal of the sole proprietorship was upheld to the extent of the credit note.
Administrative assistance:
Thedecisions are listed chronologically according to the date of publication.
