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 
Use a proper ad blocker 
Einen positiven Einfluss auf diese Reduzierung hat für Pensionskassen unter anderem die Tatsache, dass die Kapital- gegenüber den Rentenbezügen 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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so you’re telling me the pension funds want as little capital as possible? seems a bit broken 
slightly off topic but inserting a “.” after “.ch” or “.com” → e.g. “.ch.” removes the paywall for some pages like nzz or bloomberg 
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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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In the NZZ article:
Yet, in an article criticizing incomplete calculations, they fail to mention that you’d typically generate (taxable) income out of the capital withdrawn, along with being taxed on wealth, at least on Cantonal level 
Complicated topic 
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Well, I would buy gold from that CHF 800’000 and melt into a nice ten and a half kilo cube featuring an 8.15cm edge and place it on my desk.
I would occasionally caress it, but it wouldn’t create any taxable income.
(more modern people could of course buy crypto to accomplish something similar)
I think because they are only compare taxes on withdrawals
If we start adding returns on capital, then even the annuity income could be invested and can deliver returns
Well, we can just assume that the withdrawn capital is consumed at the same rate as a hypothetical pension. This can give an estimate for the wealth tax. We can also assume various level of returns on the remaining capital. For the annuity option, we just assume 0 wealth tax and total consumption.
So if the return on remaining capital is 0, and 5% is consumed yearly, the average taxable wealth in those 20 years would be 400’000. Assuming modest 0.25% wealth tax, it would be extra 20’000 taxes paid in those years.
This all points to the government proposal lacks critical thinking
They need to be clear what they want to do
- increase tax (easiest to define in my view)
- Reduce tax benefits for voluntary contributions (would be disastrous if applied retrospectively)
- Reduce tax benefits for capital withdrawals versus annuity (then use right numbers to get to parity). And who is to say if more people would choose annuities then pension funds wouldn’t collapse ?
I find the comment “remove loopholes” a bit weird. For anyone to take advantage of 2nd pillar, one needs to have pension gap. If someone close pension gap, then how come it’s loophole? It is exactly what closing pension gap provision is supposed to do anyways
The only loophole I can imagine is staggered withdrawals using VB or 3a. But even that, I don’t know if that’s a loophole or a law.
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The Liberal Party (FDP) put in an Appell for the Bundesrat to reconsider things:
They’ve clocked in on 40’000 Unterschriften so far.
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So to protect our 3A investments, it would be good to have them paid out to pay part of the mortgage? Is this a viable solution to try avoiding heavy federal taxation when retiring?
Not sure if the taxes will heavily increase - I mean, it probably is still a preferred tax rate and in comparison to other countries still on the lower end (based on the knowledge couple of weeks ago, I cannot recall if there are already concrete numbers communicated).
It’s still a calculation between wealth tax, shielded dividend/interest taxed as income and taxes at withdrawal.
3a can be withdrawn to buy in pillar 2 or pay down a mortgage so that’s an option. I would not actively search to get it (we either want real estate or not and we either want our mortgage at the level it is or not, there are other factors to take into account) but since it’s my situation, I feel comfortable paying into 3a, knowing there’s a way for me to take it our early that I’d feel comfortable with in case undesirable changes to taxation appear on the shorter term radar (I don’t like owing things to the bank so taking down my mortgage is acceptable to me).
In the current situation, I think I’d be comfortable with it anyway: I’m confident no make or break change in taxation will be made with 3a and even if my current investments end up not having been optimized when looking them in the mirror 30 years from now, I’m confident they’ll be in the “good enough” window.
SRF are making a fool of themselves by claiming, without proof or source, that lump-sum withdrawal of pillar 2 happens at the expense of tax payers, because that lump-sum is “often used up at old age” before one’s death and then the government has to pay your retirement home fees.
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