News Value Added Tax

The Swiss Federal Council puts the amendment to the VAT Regulation on the electronic procedure into force

In the future, the registration and settlement for value-added tax (VAT) is to be done exclusively electronically. This was decided by the Swiss Federal Council at its meeting on June 16, 2023. The amendment to the VAT Regulation will come into force on January 1, 2024.

As of the end of 2022, 100% of VAT registrations, around 96% of settlements and around 70% of corrections to settlements were made electronically. A large majority of taxpayers are therefore already voluntarily communicating electronically with the Swiss Federal Tax Administration (SFTA) today. It can therefore be assumed that the use of the portal is more advantageous for the taxpayers concerned than registering or declaring on paper.

With the new regulation as of January 1, 2024, the registration as a taxable person, the submission of periodic VAT statements (Art. 71 VAT Act), and of annual reconciliations and corrective statements (Art. 72 VAT Act) must be done electronically through the portal provided.

A minority of taxpayers still submit their applications to the ESTV in paper form. A transition period of one year will be granted to switch to electronic registration and electronic submission of statements, including corrections. For these persons, the mentioned new regulation will therefore only be applied as of January 1, 2025.

Taxpayers who have fulfilled their declaration obligations in paper form or via "MWST-Abrechnung easy" up to now, must therefore switch to "MWST-Abrechnung pro". With "MWST-Abrechnung easy", neither annual reconciliations nor correction statements can be submitted online.

For individual advice or further information, please contact Tatjana Späni, VAT specialist, tatjana.spaeni@fineac.ch.

Source: Swiss Federal Council

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Tatjana Späni, 29.06.2023

Keywords: VAT, Withholding tax, notification procedure, electronic procedure