Federal savings measures - Potential tax increases

I assume to show that there is significant opposition and if the proposed measures are implemented it would be met by a referendum. Just a warning to those who want to implement it that they should rethink the proposals and is not as easy as imagined.

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That proposed change is going to be dead on arrival. FDP now tries to kill it even on it’s way to parliament for political points.

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Which is a good thing imo. Shows initiative and that stuff like this will be extinguished in its tracks, to not try again.

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Employees who have made large voluntary contributions will have massive incentive to resign and withdraw 2P/3P before the new tax becomes effective. One outcome will be resignations to become self employed or leave the country - not good for national productivity.

If there is no longer a meaningful tax saving by investing in 2P it creates a disincentive to work.

There will also be a one-off distortion in the property market

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I doubt the number of people that this would apply to would have any meaningful impact on the country as a whole.

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I don’t have data but I would assume a majority of high earners make voluntary contributions to 2 and 3 Pillar on the basis of tax savings

These high earners with big pots will surely correlate to the most important and senior employees in the economy (managers, bankers, IT 
 ) and in society (Doctors,
)

IIRC the amount of tax they hoped to raise with this measure was not large and could conceivably be off-set by the above impacts

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I’m not convinced about how much people really contribute to their pension. I think most people, even high earners, tend to live paycheck to paycheck.

Even if they have large pots, few would be willing or able to forgo their future earning potential to save a bit of tax.

Where it could have an impact is at the margins if people are anyway close to retirement and can pull that forward a few years to benefit.

But remember also that super high earners are probably the ones that just working one more year would more than cover the extra tax.

I agree and I would not underestimate the potential consequences. In the UK a couple of years ago there was a problem with consultant doctors being incentivized to take early retirement due to a change and pension contributions no longer being tax efficient.

Like the consultants above who effectively faced working for free on an after tax basis, or worse :grinning:

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Good point, voluntary contributions to pillar 2 should remain incentivized just like contributions to 3a.

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Well, they may be trapped. Even if they resign, the funds would go into a VB account and they still have the withdrawal problem.

I think the government can get away with it as there’s not much the tax payers can do to work around it.

They can just move out of CH for short time and take out the voluntary part.

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More sausage making:

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Paywall :confused:

Use a proper ad blocker :wink:

Einen positiven Einfluss auf diese Reduzierung hat fĂŒr Pensionskassen unter anderem die Tatsache, dass die Kapital- gegenĂŒber den RentenbezĂŒgen konstant zunehmen. «Je mehr Kapital statt Rente bezogen wird, desto weniger muss am Ende umverteilt werden, um die laufenden Rentenversprechen zu garantieren», sagt Lötscher.

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And that’s one of the reasons why many pension providers don’t enforce a transfer of funds at employment: longevity risk (risk of retirees getting older than pension providers can afford) is bigger than the money they can make with your funds (given the investment restrictions and costs they face)

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so you’re telling me the pension funds want as little capital as possible? seems a bit broken :grimacing:

slightly off topic but inserting a “.” after “.ch” or “.com” → e.g. “.ch.” removes the paywall for some pages like nzz or bloomberg :slight_smile:

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Maybe not broken yet, but sure has fundamental issues that need to be adressed rather sooner than later imo

I like the journalism here. They are really going deep into the topic and try to discuss the key points which makes sense

If federal government wants to reduce tax advantages of capital withdrawal, they need to reviewing it in absolute terms vs % terms. The calculation shows for 800,000 CHF withdrawal was interesting

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