Good news for the married folks: soon you’ll have double the fun! 
Financially savvy people (e.g. two high income earners) didn’t marry in the first place, so nothing changed for them.
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Ha, I’m not so sure about “soon”. Maybe 2031 or 2032 I read somewhere.
Personally, despite the joy of 2 declarations, I would have preferred splitting for the flexibilty, but guess that wasn’t really on the table.
And too political for this thread
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AKA “lightning fast” in federal terms 
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To be fair, every canton now has to make adjustments, and every adjustment can lead to another cantonal referendum.
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If you mean the proposal from the Mitte, it sounds like it might still go to a vote (maybe in Sept)
But they want the best of both worlds for married folks, don’t they? I doubt that will fly.
I haven’t followed the political stances closely, but could imagine maybe pure splitting might have had a chance for a majority or vs. individual taxation, with less support from the left and liberals, more from the conservatives. But keeping both approaches to chose from? Guess that’s a bit too much to win a vote 
With flexibility I meant currently having dual and similar incomes. But in a few years, I doubt that will be the case. But that’s purely from a personal gains’ perspective.
For now, it’s business as usual, anyway.
Yeah the initiative is “most favorable taxation” wins. Out of curiosity, what do you mean with pure splitting, what would that look like?
You file a joint tax return. The combined taxable income is then divided by 2, the tax rate for a single person is applied to that halved amount, and then that rate is multiplied by the full combined income. The canton of Thurgau does this:
Bei in rechtlich und tatsächlich ungetrennter Ehe lebenden und somit gemeinsam besteuerten Ehegatten wird gemäss § 37 Absatz 2 StG der Steuersatz ermittelt, indem das steuerbare Einkommen durch den Divisor 2 geteilt wird.
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Well, just splitting, as per @markus654 definition.
But without the most favorable part. i.e. no cherry-picking.
Individual taxation results in married couples being taxed the same as non-married with the same individual income, say 100+100 each, and not disadvantaged. Legally, that was the main objective to be achieved.
Splitting would also result in same taxes between married couples with same total income, but different split, e.g. 150+50 (taxed like 2*100), so married would be advantaged vs. non-married.
Even standalone, it gets a loaded debate quite quickly whether you’d find that fair or reasonable.
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The passed vote very conveniently ignores that while you make double earner married couple pay taxes as separate individuals, they still get maximum 150% of the AHV pension while the unmarried couple gets 200% AHV as 2 separate individuals. So it is disadvantageous for married couples. I hope that is changed at the same time as individual taxation comes into force. But I don’t think it will ever go through as it would also mean single earner married couple to lose (extra) 50% AHV.
So a double earner married couple will keep getting less AHV pension that a comparable double earner non-married couple, so that single earner married couple get more pension than a single earner single person.
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That seems like a pretty orthogonal question from what was being voted (taxation vs AHV are fairly separate).
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What was voted on was treating married couple as individual economic entities for income tax. I believe it comes under the broader umbrella of what is fair and reasonable way to treat married and non-married couples - to not be discriminatory towards the personal choice of being married or not! To not penalize people for that choice.
While splitting (described in @Brndete’s post) can be seen as advantageous towards married (vs un-married) when the income is not 50:50, AHV pension laws are rather clearly disadvantageous towards double earning married couple.
Switzerland will now have 2 different sets of laws to treat married people: 2 individuals when you pay tax, and when you pay into AHV (which was already the case before), but 1 disadvanteged married economic entity when you get the AHV pension.
My wife is still upset, that I want to divorce her 3yrs before retirement (she’s 3 yrs older).
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As a married couple, you also have benefits.
To name two “costly” ones:
- Widow’s pension (not sure if abolished?)
- Low or no inheritance tax
In the end, you can choose which benefits you want. But as the saying goes: You can’t have “Fünfer und Weggli” (CHF 5 and bread).
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Any discussion on how wealth tax would be impacted? as of now all investments are in one name. Should I start investment in spouse’s name to balance it out till 2032?
Not necessarily. I think that joint broker accounts is the way to go. At IB, you can open one in a couple of days and do internal transfer of securities from your individual account to the joint one.
I assume it’s currently not yet specified since there’s no federal wealth tax.
That said, won’t it depend on the marriage contract (whether wealth is separate), rather than the fact that an account is joint/individual?
Actually, now that you mention it, wouldn’t it have made sense to have taxation follow the marriage contract? Separate taxation where separate, etc.
Not going to debate the vote, but it wouldn’t have solved the goal of the people who initiated the change (and the unconstitutionality of the law).
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