With the motion "Stop the customs and tax-free zone around Switzerland!" submitted on June 13, 2017, the author of the motion instructs the Federal Council (Department of Finance) to close the current revenue gaps in cross-border shopping traffic with regard to VAT.
Motion 17.3428 "Stop the duty and tax-free zone around Switzerland" submitted by Peter Hegglin, member of the Council of States, to the Federal Council is intended, according to the petitioner, to define regulations with neighbouring states in order to either refund the value-added tax applicable in the purchasing country and offset the value-added tax applicable in the importing country by computerised means when crossing the border, or to no longer refund the value-added tax but transfer a sum derived from purchasing surveys to the neighbouring state.
The motion is justified by the global networking, according to which, in the opinion of the motion's author, this is also increasing in private consumption. More and more of the necessary purchases are being made in remote retail centres or online. National borders are playing an increasingly subordinate role. With "shopping tourism", the Swiss economy is losing billions of francs in income, and today the figure is said to be over 10 billion francs or 11 percent of total retail sales.
In its statement of 30 August 2017, the Federal Council requested that the motion be dismissed, among other reasons because the administration cannot confirm the figures quoted by the petitioner regarding the loss of tax revenue and economic damage, as in some cases no statistics are available.
With the motion of 19 September 2017, the motion will now be submitted to the responsible Commission for Economic Affairs and Taxation (WAK-S) for preliminary examination.
