Good for Liechtenstein: Stamp duty remains unchanged – Liechtenstein
BERN/VADUZ – The Swiss people are against the abolition of stamp duty, which the Federal Council and the National Council are aiming for. Good for Liechtenstein, after all, tax revenue would have been lost as a result.
Companies still have to pay an issue tax when raising equity. The electorate rejected the abolition of the so-called stamp tax on Sunday with 63 percent, as shown by the first projection by gfs.bern on behalf of the SRG. The error range is plus/minus 3 percentage points.
No surprise
The result comes as no surprise. The last polls before the vote had pointed to a no. In the survey by Tamedia and “20 Minuten”, 60 percent of the preference rejected the template. In the survey conducted by gfs.bern on behalf of SRG, 53 percent said they had no intention to vote.
The vote concerns only one part of the stamp duty, namely the issuance duty. If a company raises additional equity of more than one million francs, it has to give up one percent. Medium and large companies are mainly affected. According to figures from the Federal Tax Administration (ESTV), around 2,300 companies paid at least one emissions tax in 2020. If the levy had actually been abolished, Switzerland would have lost an estimated 250 million Swiss francs in tax revenue per year.
Taken into account in the state budget
Due to the customs treaty, Liechtenstein is also directly affected by this decision, but the Principality cannot exert any influence. On average over the last five years, stamp duty was around 2.5 million Swiss francs per year, so it only accounts for a small part of stamp duty.