Taxation of employee shareholdings, in particular employee options

In Circular No. 37 of the Swiss Federal Tax Administration (FTA) dated 22 July 2013 on the taxation of employee shareholdings (CS 37), various terms relating to employee shareholdings were defined and an overview of the tax implications of the then new provisions on the taxation of employee shareholdings was given. The pecuniary advantage treated there, which is granted to employees through the issue of employee shares, forms part of the employer's personnel expenses, if and to the extent that this was actually recorded. For details and the definition of the various terms, reference is made to the explanations in the circular letter mentioned above, which are applied analogously in the present case.

The present Kreisschreiben 37A is intended as a supplement to KS 37 to provide an overview of the main features of the current practice of the tax treatment of employee profit-sharing at the level of the employer. There are various possibilities with regard to the procedure for obtaining the participation rights as well as for structuring the legal relationships between the individual parties involved in the creation and implementation of an employee participation plan.