Switzerland Supreme Court overturns nationwide referendum on income tax News
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Switzerland Supreme Court overturns nationwide referendum on income tax

Switzerland’s Supreme Court on Wednesday overturned the outcome of a nationwide referendum on the grounds that voters were given insufficient information.

The 2016 referendum concerned married couples being unfairly taxed for their joint incomes compared to cohabiting partners who are taxed separately. Through a narrow margin, the referendum to equally tax cohabiting partners was rejected with a 50.8 percent vote to reject the proposal. During the 2016 vote, the federal government indicated that 80,000 married couples are unfairly taxed under the current tax regime. However, the government later revised the figure to almost 500,000 married couples who were impacted.

Due to the tight margins for the measure, the court ruled that this misleading information could have potentially changed the outcome of the referendum vote.

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