Federal popular initiative "for the one-off property levy"

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Voting poster
Voting poster
Voting poster

The federal popular initiative “for the one-off property tax” is a Swiss popular initiative that was voted on December 3, 1922 and rejected by the people and the cantons. It was launched by the Social Democratic Party of Switzerland with the aim of paying off debts made during the First World War through a property levy.

Advancement

The initiative provided for a one-off property levy on the total assets of natural and legal persons as of December 31, 1922. The progressive tax rate rose from 6 percent on assets over 80,000 francs to 60 percent on assets over 32.7 million francs. In the constitutional text for the vote, it was explicitly regulated that de jure it was a one-off property levy. The constitutional article would have been deleted after a one-off survey. According to estimates, the levy would have affected around 0.6% of the population. The initiative for a one-off property tax was rejected with 87% no votes. The highest voter turnout ever achieved in Switzerland was 86.3%.

In particular, the initiative was an attack on Swiss banking secrecy . All natural and legal persons should be obliged to provide information to the tax authorities. In particular, the financial institutions would have been obliged to “submit to all control measures of the assessment authorities”.

Voting slogans

The template was only supported by the SP . The bourgeois parties FDP , CVP and SVP had all passed the no slogan.

poll

The initiative was clearly rejected. 109,702 valid yes votes (share: 13.0%) were compared to 736,952 no votes (share: 87.0%). The highest approval was achieved in the cantons of Basel-Stadt with 28% and in Geneva with 25%.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Simon Loretz and David Stadelmann (2014): On the social acceptance of one-off property levies, IHS Policy Brief, No. 6, May 2014, Institute for Higher Studies, Vienna ( Memento from June 6, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) (accessed on 5 June 2014; PDF; 950 kB)
  2. Robert U. Vogler: The Swiss Banking Secret: Origin, Significance, Myth ( Memento of March 7, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) (accessed on February 7, 2009; PDF; 469 kB)