Swiss voters on Sunday decisively rejected a call to require women to do national service in the military, civil protection teams or other forms, as all men must do already.
Official results. with counting still ongoing in some areas after a referendum, showed that more than half of Switzerland’s cantons, or states, had rejected the “citizen service initiative” by wide margins. That meant it was defeated, because proposals need a majority of both voters and cantons to pass.
Voters also heavily rejected a separate proposal to impose a new national tax on individual donations or inheritances of more than 50 million francs ($62 million), with the revenues to be used to fight the impact of climate change and help Switzerland meet its ambitions to have net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
Insane that any democracy would reject an inheritance tax
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the problem how i understood is, that we are not only talking about cash money but also money that is in businesses. family owned businesess may then be forced to sell their business to shareholder owned foreign corpos, because they could not afford it due to the tax. that sparked some major fear among voters. the result was not even close, it was 78% No! thats hughe and beyond any left/right worldview, not a single canton voted yes, that alone is a clear indicator that this bill was not very well-thought-out
with the revenues to be used to fight the impact of climate change and help Switzerland meet its ambitions to have net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
Maybe the people wanted to have actual social services provided to them instead of climate action.
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They could light the money on fire and it would still be worth impleminating
Not that insane. Most people only concern themselves with their own issues. And if you’re a 40 year old whose childhood home is now worth 500k or whatever and you have to pay 200k in taxes in order to inherit it, then you probably want to vote against it because otherwise the government will take it.
Okay, take all that with a grain of salt because I’m not too familiar with inheritance law, but it’s based on multiple similar stories I’ve heard from people.
I still think it should be taxed, don’t get me wrong. But I understand why people are against it.
The text indicates that it’s only on inheritances greater than 62 million dollars
Yeah, it’s true that in this case most people would never have to care about that. When I replied I was thinking about inheritance taxes in general. My bad.
Because it is theft. If my parents are successful and pay their taxes why is it fair to double tax a child’s inheritance. You tax earnings and income. You don’t the same money multiple times.
It’s more important to prevent an aristocracy than it is to be fair.
Those things aren’t mutually exclusive. You can be fair as well as tax the rich.
Over 60 Million dollars is a lot of money. More money than your kid needs to live comfortably and never have to work ever again. That’s so much money you are creating a family that never has to experience the life of a normal person and can use that money to influence politics to compound that effect.
How much money does a person need to live comfortably without having to contribute labor? 2-5 million? Is living in luxury but not so much that someone who’s never had a real job can just buy elections unfair?
You are presenting issues that are irrelevant to the tax. Yes those things you mentioned are unfair and should be regulated accordingly. Those are irrelevant to an inheritance tax. If you want to create a wealth tax over a certain amount that’s fine but call a spade a spade. Don’t hide it as inheritance tax and allow wealthy people to hide their money in other ways like trusts and businesses.
Thing is the same money does regularly get taxed multiple times. You get shafted on money as it comes to you (income tax) and u get shafted on that money once you spend it to (sales tax). Hell I bought a house and will get to pay taxes on that annually for as long as I own it, despite already paying my state and fed govt taxes.
Just because everyone is getting fucked doesn’t mean it’s right. Double taxing only hurts the poor because they can’t hide money in tax free investments or businesses that they use to write off expenses.
Why is that insane? Wasn’t tax already paid on that money once?
This bullshit-argument again.
Guess what, money will circle around the economy and it will be taxed on different occasions and often several times during its lifespan (whatever that means for todays mostly digital money anyways). Especially when things (or money) change owners, tax is to be expected.
When you got paid, you paid income tax, and when you buy stuff with it - oh my gosh! - taxes again!! (In the form of VAT) Outrageous!
This is such a common thing, that it simply baffles me how anyone could think that “that money has been taxed already” is a sound argument.
You don’t pay VAT/GST on the money, you pay it on the product’s price (and you can avoid it if the receiptent agrees to get paid in cash and don’t show it in the books). For assets, you are buying it with your money that you have already earnd that has been already taxed. You also have to pay a stamp duty to the government when you buy any asset, you pay registration fees, you pay all the property & Municipal taxes and when you sell it, you will be paying a capital gains tax anyways, so what’s the point of charging an inheritance tax?
Simple question to you: My networth is just 100k USD, I inherited 500k USD (current market value) house from my parents, and the inheritance tax is at 20%, wouldn’t I lose all my existing money and assets I for something that is just worth 500k USD as an unliquid asset? To sell that house you will have to find a buyer which is not an easy or cost-free task. If the house doesn’t sell, you will be paying property taxes anyways, and once you sell it, you will pay the capital gains tax as well so what’s the point of inheritance tax?
What I think is a better solution: Define a certain threshold where the value of inheritance is above a level where the person inheriting becomes wealthy beyond their and their family’s actual needs, and distribute that wealth among the lower income people in the form of permanent housing.
You don’t pay VAT/GST on the money, you pay it on the product’s price
And how do you pay that price? With money. This is pure sophism.
And, duh, you can avoid paying taxes if you cheat… that’s not exclusive to VAT.
And you are further elaborating my point. You will be taxed on different occasions even when the money or asset doesn’t even change ownership. That’s my whole point. The argument that you already paid taxes on some money isn’t really a solid point against inheritance tax, it’s a common occurence in many areas of life. Yet it always comes up when inheritance tax is discussed.
Just like your example with the inheritance of a small home that will ruin the recipient. The example is always constructed in bad faith with a lousy tax policy in the first place. No one is trying to ruin the average joe who happens to inherit grampas house. A better design, and the one all supporters of inheritance tax I know argue for, is one with a reasonably high allowance, to avoid these scenarios, and even if you cross the allowance threshhold by a little bit, you only have to pay the fictious 20% on the amount exceeding the allowance. So say we have an (unreasonably low, but just for the sake of the example) allowance of 400K, now you inherit that 500K property you’ll have to pay (500K-400K)x0.2=20K.
If you wanted to protect small inheritances even more, you could design a progressive tax, too.
This, with a much more reasonable allowance sounds a bit like your so called ‘better solution’.
This, with a much more reasonable allowance sounds a bit like your so called ‘better solution’.
That is exactly what I said. Couldn’t put it in better words. Exemptions. Only difference I said is exempt the amount upto, let’s say, what a family of 3 people needs for let’s say 3 years. That way the inheriter won’t have to pay a superficial tax while still maintaining a livable lifestyle. Charging inheritance tax on poor people (however little) puts a lot of burden on them for something they are not willingly earning or purchasing. Charging millionaires and billionaires with inheritance tax is better as there will be a continuous cycle of wealth redistribution and thus they won’t be able abuse their powers. But wealth tax is more efficient that way as it would prevent someone becoming obscenely wealthy in the first place.
Taxing the poor has never worked, they will hoard more unaccounted whatever wealth they have to avoid those taxes rather than owning real estate, shared, bonds, etc and participating in the economy. No one likes paying taxes — especially on something which they are not willingly earning or purchasing.
And how do you pay that price? With money. This is pure sophism.
Also you pay VAT and GST only once — so it is not an example of double taxation. These have been designed in such a way that the only the final customer pays tax on it as the final entity in the supply chain. Whatever VAT/GST the retailer, supplier and the service provider paid is refunded by the government in the form of ITC (Input Tax Credit).
Charging millionaires and billionaires with inheritance tax is better as there will be a continuous cycle of wealth redistribution and thus they won’t be able abuse their powers. But wealth tax is more efficient that way as it would prevent someone becoming obscenely wealthy in the first place.
And that is the point of inheritance tax. There might be other means to achieve that same goal, but I suspect inheritance tax is politically more realistic. In our western societies theres a deeply ingrained narrative of ‘rags to riches’ and how the rich earned their money because they contribute so much to society and worked hard for it, coupled with the wishful thinking of ‘it might be me some day’. I don’t have to preach, how flawed those ideas are, but it is much easier within that ideology to argue for an inheritance tax, where it is obvious that the heir didn’t have to do anything to really deserve it.
Wealth tax needs a bit more of a marxist understanding of economic mechanisms.
It should have been.
Is Switzerland full of sexist people who think “someday I’LL be rich so I don’t want to tax MYSELF more, hypothetically maybe in the distant future”?
Afaik, Switzerland is a very conservative place. So that pretty much aligns with what you said.
They are so conservative that women got the right to vote federally in 1971. In one Canton they only got the right to vote at the local level in 1990 after a Supreme Court decision. They were the last Western Democracy to do so.
Native Americans didn’t get the right to vote until 1975… unless you are counting the 1990 thing they weren’t the last.
I want to be part of a normal species
Sexist is debatable but… yeah
But everyone worshiping the rich? Yeah, that is Switzerland in a nutshell. A decade or so ago I spent a week in Switzerland on holiday and… even the state funded museums kinda felt like “And then so and so developed a really cool technology that saved countless lives. AND THEN THEY GOT RICH!!! FRANCA FRANCA BILS Y’ALL!!! And here is what they bought with it and the house they lived in and how much paper it takes to print out their monthly statement and… Oh, the tech? Whatever, nobody cares about that”
The main counter argument was that this tax would make Switzerland quite unattractive to rich people, and that they would simple leave the country so that they don’t have to pay this tax. And then Switzerland would even lose tax income overall.
It’s no coincidence that they are notorious for being a tax haven for unsavory individuals with shady dealings.
Does the earth revolve around the sun?
Yes. Europe isn’t the magical forward thinking land it’s made it to be lol. Well, most of it isn’t, anyway. Still a great place to spend some time though.
That’s a statement at the level of Trump statements. Congrats, you now stand shoulder to shoulder with the pedophile in chief in sweeping statements based on a minority of people.
I don’t really see women voting to have themselves be drafted.
I also don’t see them voting to make rich people slightly less rich.
Do you not see that because you read the title of the article?
It feels very strange to be a US citizen and actually be able to judge another country for making a silly conservative decision. Woo?
I think, the initiative was rejected by all parties,but probably for different reasons. If you look at the position of the parties in this table
Edit: this is the position of the left
What is not well enough reprensented in this post is that the Service Citoyen was not only about makimg women do a mandatory service. It was to transform the outdated and regressive mandatory service for men into a more general service to the collective that treated security not as a entirely militaristic issue but as a wholistic one.
Now parliament will interpret this as a mandate to cull the existing useful civil service and force every men (and potentially women too) into the military.
There shouldn’t be mandatory military service at all
My theory is that if you can’t convince enough people to volunteer to fight for your nation, then you have failed as a nation.
With this parliament the military will stay and grow and become more and more unavoidable. Service citoyen would have countered that…
Tell that to Ukraine.
That’s an option I would accept too.
I thought everyone had to serve. Sad.
As an American, I have no room at all to judge this decision. But
proposals need a majority of both voters and cantons to pass.
That sounds amazing. Let’s do that, please.
I mean, straight popular vote would probably be better. But this could really do what the Electoral College stans say that it was made to do, without doing what it actually does.
That sounds amazing.
It sounds arbitrary and heavily weighted to favor the smaller cantons. Same problem we have with the US Senate and the filibuster. Representatives for a meager 30M voters can obstruct policy championed by the other 300M
Anything even slightly better than the idiocy we have seems amazing to me, apparently
The takes on here are wild as a Swiss dude.
Hint: Mandatory service is a problem.
Bunch of morons.
