In the case of postal items that trigger a deadline and are delivered at the weekend, the deadline should only begin to run on the following working day. This principle already applies in civil procedure law and is now to be applied to all federal law.
At its meeting on February 12, 2025, the Federal Council took note of the consultation results and adopted the corresponding dispatch. Various laws must be amended in order to transpose this fiction of service into all federal law. Specifically affected are the VwVG, the BGG, the MStG, the MStP, the DBG and the ATSG. In order to ensure that the fiction of service applies throughout federal law and that there are no legal loopholes, the Federal Council also proposes that the new rule be explicitly set out in the Federal Act on the expiry of time limits on Saturdays. Based on the feedback received during the consultation process, the Federal Council has also included the StHG in the proposal. This means that in future a uniform regulation for the delivery of tax matters on weekends and public holidays will apply at federal and cantonal level.
The dispatch is available here, the draft here and the result of the consultation procedure here.
