will return 2,700 euros per person

Switzerland has traditionally been a golden destination for large fortunes, not only because of the banking secrecy that protects the depositors of its bank accounts, but also because it has a relatively low tax burden.

This has not prevented some regions of the country from accumulating a revenue surplus after having covered all the needs of their territories. Now, the authorities have made a decision about what to do with all that money that is overflowing public coffers: return it to its citizens.

Unprecedented decision: return what is left over. The Swiss canton of Basel, to which the city with the same name belongs, has been posting surpluses for a decade as it completes its annual fiscal year after having satisfied all the financing needs in its territory.

According to sources from the French media France 3the Grand Council of the Canton of Basel-City, the equivalent of the regional parliament, asked the local government to draft a law that would allow them to return to citizens the surplus from tax collection between the fiscal years 2012 and 2022.

An unexpected extra pay. In total, the surplus of the regional administration amounts to almost 1,200 million Swiss francs (about 1,280 million euros), of which 464 million correspond to the surplus for the 2023 financial year. The decision of the Grand Council would allow the return of around 80 % of this amount to the citizens of the Canton of Basel-City. The remaining 20% ​​will be used to amortize local public debt.

According to first estimates, this is equivalent to each taxpayer who has paid taxes in that region in the last decade, will receive an average of 2,500 Swiss francs per year (about 2,700 euros at the exchange rate) for the next ten years. Companies would be excluded from this refund system.

Wealth with all needs covered. The Canton of Basel-City is one of the most fiscally sound in the country. According to L’Est Républicain, about 197,000 inhabitants live there and, seeing that a surplus was generated year after year, a tax reduction equivalent to 112 million Swiss francs (about 120 million euros) was proposed in a referendum. Even so, the coffers have continued to generate surpluses after having covered debts, renewed equipment and strengthened the educational system.

Given the result of the collection, the Grand Council has just voted on a new tax reduction of 160 million euros that will come into force from January 1, 2025. “Whoever knows how to read a number with eight zeros knows that the city of Basel receives too much money,” says the Grand Councilor of Basel, Lorenz Amient to L’Est Républicain.

Disagreeing voices. Although the measure has been voted and approved with a majority, there are voices that disagreed with the way of returning these taxes and criticized that companies were left out of this distribution when they also contribute to that surplus with their taxes.

For its part, another sector of the Grand Council believed that, since the fundraising effort had been made, that money should be dedicated to protecting the environment, health and culture, instead of using new resources to return it to citizens.

In WorldOfSoftware | Going to the bathroom is not work: a Swiss court allows a company to force its employees to clock in when they go to the bathroom

Image | Pexels (Armando Oliveira)