Tax

The Swiss Federal Supreme Court has ruled that tax secrecy takes precedence over the principle of transparency (ruling intended for publication 1C_272/2022, delivered in open court by four votes to one). The origin of this ruling lies in the request of the NGO Society for Threatened Peoples, based on the Transparency Act (LTrans). The NGO was asking the Federal Office of Customs and Border Protection (FOCB) for access to detailed statistics on gold imports by major Swiss importers, for the[...]

When a foreign company holding a bank account has elected domicile with an agent in Switzerland in the context of an administrative assistance procedure, can the Federal Tax Administration (FTA) use the edict procedure to inform its beneficial owner of the existence of the procedure? The Swiss Federal Supreme Court answered this question in the affirmative in a ruling dated November 8, 2022 (2C_772/2021 and 2C_773/2021). The references of the company's bank accounts appeared on the list appended by France[...]