In politics, competition is often praised, but the fun stops when it comes to taxes.
The reform promises a reduction in tax competition even without a federal share of the additional income.
Competition has great advantages. Because he inspires. Without competition, most people would be far poorer. But competition also has disadvantages. Because he’s trying. Entrepreneurs like to sing the praises of competition in Sunday school, but on weekdays it’s tempting to limit competition on your own behalf as much as possible.
Such a double game is also tempting in politics: people like to praise competition and call for strict antitrust laws, but the fun stops when it comes to their own affairs – taxes. For the political left, tax competition between states and cantons is traditionally the devil, while cartel agreements represent the ideal. But even the middle classes sometimes have trouble with tax competition, as the consultation on the Federal Council’s proposal for the implementation of the global minimum tax for large international companies shows. The Green Liberals and the Center reject the Federal Council’s proposal to leave the full additional income from the planned special tax with the cantons – because this threatens to intensify tax competition.
It remains to be seen how bad a tightening would be. But the reform promises a reduction in tax competition even without a federal share of the additional income. The affected cantons could use their additional income from the required tax increase for other location improvements, but on balance this would at best correspond to a zero-sum game for them. In fact, the cantons most affected have to reckon with a minus because as a result of the reform they are paying more money into the financial equalization system for poorer cantons.