On 30 August 2018, the Swiss Federal Tax Administration (SFTA) released a clarifying statement limiting the obligation to pay the radio and television fee to companies liable to Swiss Value Added Tax (VAT) with a registered office, domicile or permanent establishment in the Swiss territory. Further reference was made to the explanatory report of the Federal Office of Communications which was released the day before and had named incompatibilities with international law and international contractual obligations of Switzerland as triggering factors for the alteration. Companies without a registered office, domicile or permanent establishment in the Swiss territory, therefore, will not be liable to the fee (up to CHF 35,590 per year).

The statement was made only months after the SFTA confirmed that foreign companies would also be subject to the radio and television fee as of 1 January 2019 if they were registered for Swiss VAT purposes and generated a global turnover of CHF 500,000 or more.¹ The fact that foreign domiciled companies without any receiving devices in Switzerland would become subject to the fee was controversially debated in the foregoing months, which is why the newly published statement is positive news.

For Swiss-based entities the assessment mechanism for the radio and television fee remains in place. Thus the following assessment bases are applied, whereby the fee will be collected by the SFTA via separate invoice as from 1 January 2019:

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ENDNOTE

¹ See EY Global Tax Alert, Switzerland to introduce new assessment model for Federal Radio and Television Law, dated 3 May 2018.

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CONTACTS

For additional information with respect to this Alert, please contact the following:

Ernst & Young AG, Indirect Tax Services, Zurich

• Romy Müller
  romy.mueller@ch.ey.com
• Andreas Wartmann
  andreas.wartmann@ch.ey.com

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ATTACHMENT

PDF version of this Tax Alert