Long thread. 
Isn’t CGT implemented/applied (in other countries) only for realized gains within a certain timeframe (in my eyes that == capital gains income)?
If it has to come to it, I think something like holding a security for at least 3 years cancelling the CGT applicability, with a FIFO approach per share, would make sense.
Depends on the country.
Some do, some don’t have a limitation.
Germany, for instance, use to have a one year holding period after which capital gains used to be tax free - but they changed their law and got rid of it.
@Patron nice avatar 
@ProvidentRetriever too bad you deleted your comment, I totally agree with what you wrote.
This part is false as I have already pointed out before. The parliament won’t include capital gains with Kapitaleinkommen.
It’s a result of us getting shy of debate, nothing more. We can’t socialize our fears (“education and the government made me afraid to state my opinions openly”) and privatize our successes (“I’ve earned all my money on my own without any help from the society and having to pay some of it back to keep the system working is high banditry”).
Let’s stand up for ourselves, shall we? It’s important to be open minded and to give way to other opinions than ours (while still debating and arguing from our point of view) but it’s also important to accept that not everybody will share our opinion and that it’s not a reason not to share them (unless, of course, they’re against the law). Informed and educated opinions usually give birth to the more interesting discussions, though, so I’d say it’s always worth it to check our facts before posting them (though I’m very much guilty of not doing that everytime, myself).
Edit:
And the result of that will be that social unrest will rise and those of the rich who are uncareful will get caught in the fire and loose it all. Those who play the game carefuly and get lucky will probably escape and keep their status but hey, they’re probably not the ones claiming openly that giving back to society is robbery and that they’ll get away with not paying a dime if we try to make them. 
Here’s what I think is likely going to happen if the initiative is adopted:
As a result, Mustachians (retiring on 100k/year) will be pretty much unaffected.
…and so will the middle class or the eponymous 99%.
It would quite literally only make the 1% of the very rich and super-rich pay more taxes.
It’s not to be. It has already been defined.
It just seems disingenuous that the initiators claim that capital gains will be taxed - while not including corresponding wording in their proposal.
It’s not that easy to illegally hide money from governments anymore at least not without increasing your risk substantially. You need to move to increasingly riskier jurisdictions (or crypto as a widely unregulated space) to do so.
From a perspective of taxing “the 1%”, the challenge may rather lie in the plethora of legal setups and structures that are (in practice) only available to the “rich”.
Maybe - but it’s quite the non-argument.
There will always be people going to great lengths in trying to evade, circumvent or game the system. Does that make a good argument for not having any rules in the first place - or at all? Few people would think so.
It won’t. Every extra buck spent on taxes increases your budget for tax optimization. You pay an advisor, who will find a way for you to pay less.
Then the government will see that it’s getting not enough tax income, so it will lower the thresholds, in order to finance its new social programs.
Btw I wonder how many people come to Switzerland to pay their taxes, already with their capital, because these taxes are relatively low. With this initiative you’re scaring these people away.
The argument is akin to “Every quid spent on the police will incentivise criminals to become more sophisticated at evading them - so it never makes sense to increase budgets for policing”. In fact, why have a police force at all, if it only makes criminals more sophisticated?
There is only so much you can optimise (without moving away).
And that’s especially true at the lower and upper end of the scales.
Also, it’s a fact that the top 1% pay the highest taxes - relatively to their income (I’m linking this third source since I’m lazy, but the first-hand ESTV stats do provide similar results).
side note: Notice how the tax burden for the top 1% has fallen over the last few decades?
Why should you come to Switzerland and pay taxes - when you can go to the Emirates or Monaco instead and not pay income tax?
Also, there is already a niche, tailor-made tax regime in place for such people. In essence, they do what you proposed earlier: Only pay taxes on consumption (subject to certain minima and exceptions).
That’s where our views differ : I don’t think that’s inherently true. We’ve done a lot of status quo maintenance, lately, ensuring that it’s easier for the rich to stay rich than for a «normal» skilled person to become rich (not saying it’s impossible, I believe in the FIRE movement, but it’s way harder if you start without capital than if you start with a bunch).
It’s happening both on a country level (our society is partly designed that way) and between nations (rich nations will get out of the COVID crisis with an even more reinforced status, because they could protect their economy, while poor nations will stay poor because they can’t even get their hands on enough vaccines as is).
One of the factors for progress is how much are we kept on our toes vs becoming complacent being easy and achievable. That’s a purpose of inflation : accumulated capital looses value, we have to keep it active to stay wealthy. It’s true in other domains as well. It’s necessary that, doing nothing, rich people loose money because if they don’t, then they have no need to be creative and put their capital to work, bettering society.
Not putting pressure on the rich is like giving free money to the poors without applying any check : it’s not an efficient allocation of resources and it’s going to bite us in the ass with time. I’m not saying this initiative is good (most popular initiatives are poorly worded and hard to implement) but taxing the rich and progressive taxation is an important part of efficient allocation of capital. If they can’t find a way to make more money with it than what they’re taxed, that also means that they’re not good enough at making money with money. Let people with more skills make that money instead. For every Elon Musk, there is a Kardashian.
Let them. We don’t need them. We’ve grown accustomed to a level of comfort way above what is necessary to reach happiness and keep progress going moving forward. One of the biggest problem of our society is that too many people have too much time and too much money, allocating them to frivolous pursuits, instead of working on fundamentals. One day, the fundamentals will fail and we’ll be surprised that it actually required maintenance, like avocado toasts magically pop on the shelves of the Migros/Coop/Aldi/Lidl next door.
Contrary to you, I’m not of the opinion that taxation is “theft”, “stealing” or “robbery”.
Taxation is based on legislation. Not by vague claims or campaign slogans.
The assertion that the actual constitutional amendment will affect the “average” person is at least as unfounded as the assertion of the initiators that capital gains will be taxed by this proposal.
Maybe it subsequently does.
I still think it’s a long way - a much, much longer way - politically to make capital gains taxable income. Since it would affect a great many of people. Too many to be politically viable in the foreseeable future.
Somewhat true - but hardly generating income (even more so since we do not have capital gains taxes). Some pretty pointless to the the question of taxation.
As I said, unless you increase risk substantially. The jurisdictions that you’d have to move will also increase in risk with time - since most reputable jurisdictions have adopted CRS.
It may be unethical to take money from someone having more (by theft, stealing, robbery or coercion). Yet the fact is that some people do behave unethically and they do commit property crimes. Some of them violent.
If you look at violent crimes and income equality, there is a high correlation between them:
That’s why a redistributive taxation may be reasonable. And it’s what most governments try to do: to strike a balance between redistribution of wealth and leaving each individual what he or she earned, without owing something to someone else.
And I’m all for this balanced approach.
In general, I am against all initiatives and prefer that Swiss political system, probably the best in the world, be left to do its work.
When it comes to the text of initiative - correct me if I am wrong - I don’t think there is any legal obligation to consider anything not included in the text of the initiative and written somewhere on the website of initiators. So I cut the crap and read only the text of the initiative. Maybe some comments explaining certain key points.
https://99prozent.ch/argumente/initiativtext/
This text which is legally put to vote is 60% a brave statement about how they are going to help those who in a need without not even an actual implementation, but even without any actual definition. You don’t put things like this in the constitution. Part 3 is completely pathetic.
In general the text has no actual content. That’s why I am saying it is useless, it doesn’t force anything and is a pure left populism. I think I am not the only one seeing it and I am sure there will be statements explaining to the general population how meaningless is this text. Furthermore, because of the political landscape of Switzerland, unfortunately these are right populist initiatives that have chances to be accepted, not the left ones.
So please stop inventing all kinds of conspiracy theories.
That‘s preposterous, sorry.
The constitution is literally full of (somewhat „vague“) fundamental principles - the actual implementation of which is deferred to further legislation. In fact, that‘s kind of the definition of a constitution.
It is a somewhat Swiss peculiarity that the constitution contains relatively specific wording in many areas. This due to the high degree of autonomy the cantons have, the politically will to restrict federal powers and competence - and the relative ease with which constitutional amendments can be demanded by the populace by way of such initiatives. The more specific their wording, the more will they end up looking somewhat incoherently „tagged on“ to the constitution, once accepted.
So which fundamental principles are supposed to be defined by this text?
None really.
It’s merely a very particular piece of legislation that - systematically - doesn‘t fit or belong in there.
I think it‘s just a quirk of our political system that, for a grassroots initiative demanding such particular legislation, it is easiest to change the constitution by popular vote.
I meant bullshit like this:
Sorry, I will be more explicit next time.
No it’s not right, taxation doesn’t kill anyone and not sure why you’re pulling that up. With that line of thought I guess the argument is that all legislation is bad and let’s go all live happily in libertarian dreamland where we’ll all be free from government outreach because all the government provide is bad?
(reality check for you, that’s a fringe opinion and most people won’t support that 
)
Right taxation is based on legislation.
Please don’t twist my words.
The proposal text clearly defers the implementation details to further legislation.
This is what I meant by taxation is based on legislation - not by the campaign fluff on their website.
It doesn’t.
But “I’m dirt poor and you’re filthy rich - so I’m going to steal from you” is an explanation for a causal relation that’s immediately obvious to common sense.
“Stock prices in New York, United States of America have risen - that’s why there are more rainy clouds over Berne, Switzerland” is not.
Maybe.
While that may be a root cause (and I’m pretty sure it’s true in more than just a few countries), it doesn’t change anything about the argument, does it?
Progressive taxation - whether you’re for or against it - is a way of reducing (net) income equality. Reducing corruption is probably another.
What matters is the text being voted, not the fluff around it. With a majority in parliament against it, it’s pretty clear it won’t go any further that what is in the text (which isn’t much )
We would still have food, we would still have homes (though more of them would be wooden), we would still have heating, tap water and electricity, we would still have medicine.
To use an analogy, when you cut the tallest trees in a forest, the small trees don’t stay small, they grow to use the space that has been fred by the oldest, maybe ill, trees who could still strive because they got more sun than the others. It would be a mistake to think the skills required to replace the richest and biggest earning people on the planet aren’t there in some of the poorer people as well. If we give them space and a need to flourish, it will.
Nice analogy.
But the big question is: Why cut the tallest trees? And why would a tree want to grow tall if it’s then cut down anyway?
A society must maintain an equilibrium. One extreme would be a society where a few tall trees, to stay with that picture, get all the sunlight and nothing can live anymore below them. But the other extreme, when nobody wants to be a tall tree, would be something like collective farming in the Soviet Union, as part of their five-year plans.
We will never agree on where the equilibrium is. We must trust that our political system, one way or the other, keeps the country in a good equilibrium.
One thing that I ask myself is: Why do so many of these initiatives aim at taking more money out of society with the goal to redistribute it? It seems that nobody asks if the government’s fund allocation is appropriate in the first place.