ZURICH: Swiss canton that includes Gstaad, a renowned playground for wealthy expats, held a referendum Sunday to decide whether they should continue to enjoy a special tax break.
Voters in the Bern canton as well as that of Basel-Landschaft are pronouncing on whether a system under which foreigners pay a lump sum tax on the basis of their spending instead of their earnings should be eliminated.
In 2010 the number of so-called "tax refugees" in Switzerland taking advantage of the system stood at 5,445 and they paid 668 million Swiss francs (550 million euros, $715 million) in taxes, or an average of a little over 120,000 euros each.
Three of Switzerland's 26 cantons have already stamped out the privilege since 2009.
Most of the Bern canton's expats who benefit from the system who include French rocker Johnny Hallyday and French-Polish film director Roman Polanski live in Gstaad, a small ski resort dotted with luxury chalets.
Hallyday took up residence there in 2006 and, according to the newspaper Le Matin, he earned some five million euros ($6.5 million) last year on which he paid around 575,000 euros in tax "or what he spends in two months, according to his entourage."
"These lump sum taxes have become a boon for a lot of trustees," Socialist lawmaker Margret Kiener Nellen told the Swiss press. "At Gstaad, for example, there are 13 multi-millionaire Greek families that pay ridiculously low taxes. It's scandalous."
Comments
Comments are closed.