Tax burden in cantons and municipalities 2023
Tabea Lorenz
According to the press release issued by the Federal Finance Administration (FFA) on January 5, 2023, the cantons and municipalities on average in Switzerland exhaust around a quarter of their resource potential through fiscal levies. The tax exhaustion index calculated by the FFA has declined for the ninth time in a row in the reference year 2023. Compared with the last reference year 2022, 18 cantons have exhausted their resource potential to a lesser extent in terms of taxes. In contrast, 8 cantons have recorded a higher tax burden - this has increased most in the cantons of Ticino and Appenzell Ausserrhoden. Viewed across Switzerland as a whole, this results in a decline in tax exhaustion of 0.2 percentage points.
There has been little overall change in the cantonal distribution, with the cantons of Valais, Fribourg and Basel-Stadt swapping places in the bottom third of the scale. The cantons of central Switzerland remain well below the Swiss average, with Zug having the lowest figure at 11.1%. The tax burden continues to be highest in some cantons in western Switzerland. As in the previous year, Geneva is the frontrunner with 33.7 %.
The tax utilisation index shows the proportion of a canton's taxable economic power that is burdened on average by fiscal charges. It is calculated by comparing the effective tax revenues of the cantons and their municipalities according to the financial statistics of the FFA with their resource potential according to the national fiscal equalization system. The resource potential reflects the economic potential of the taxpayers and thus the economic strength of the cantons. The index is to be interpreted similarly to the fiscal quota, which is determined at the national level.
The corresponding media release and the raw material for the media release are available here.
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