Leveraging Swiss Farming Tax Breaks

From my Swiss Miss, I discovered that farmers in Switzerland receive incredible tax breaks and subsidies. Has any one looked into how to leverage this to your advantage? For example, if you got a home and had a chicken on it/or a small goat, could you consider yourself a “farm” and therefore qualify for farm tax rules? Or what if you had a beehive or something small, but still enable you to be considered inside the agriculture bubble? Thoughts?

Not at all possible.

  1. You need an education to receive these subsidies and I think also for the tax breaks.

  2. Your farm needs to fulfill a lot of requirements to recieve the money.

If you’re seriously considering doing such a thing (of questionable societal worth, I have to say), look into this document first:

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In Poland, farmers pay lower social contributions (pension etc). You need to own some arable land and plow it once a year to qualify. Some of the richest men in Poland are officially “farmers”, so that they can save a few hundred bucks per month. It is of “questionable societal worth”, but it’s also legal. I find it stupid that these tax breaks exist in the first place. Don’t get me wrong, there is always a noble idea at the beginning of this (protect our local farmers!), but you end up with a lot of bureaucratic overhead (complex tax law, control) and a bunch of people trying to abuse it to pay less taxes.

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It’s would be easier to move to Schwytz than receive farmers subsidies :slight_smile: If you are really rich and a foreigner, you can also have a “forfait fiscal”

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I agree, that these kinds of subsidies are not optimal.
But farmers do still provide some service to society, especially in the mountain. So taking these subsidies without doing any kind of service seems even worse to me.