ZURICH (AP) – What’s love got to do with it when taxes are at stake?
Zurich voters broke with long-standing Swiss policy Sunday by ending tax breaks for wealthy foreigners like the American singer Tina Turner and the Russian billionaire Viktor Vekselberg.
The canton, which includes the exclusive “Gold Coast” along Lake Zurich, voted 52.9 percent to do away with the privileges. The rules will apply only to cantonal (state) and community taxes, not to federal taxes.
Switzerland has long attracted some of the world’s richest people. Most of the country’s 26 cantons offer highly beneficial flat taxes to wealthy foreigners.
Zurich’s government and parliament opposed the change, warning it could prompt an exodus of rich foreigners who were interested in more than Alpine beauty alone. One Zurich resident, the German milk baron Theo Mueller, had threatened to leave if the initiative passed.
In Zurich, 137 people qualified for special tax rules at the end of 2006, the last year for which information is available. It is the first canton to eliminate the flat, or lump-sum, tax.
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