Swiss voters have decisively rejected a call to require women to do national service in the military, civil protection teams or other forms as men must do already.

Swiss voters on Sunday decisively rejected a call to require women to do national service in the military, civil protection teams or other forms, as all men must do already.

Official results. with counting still ongoing in some areas after a referendum, showed that more than half of Switzerland’s cantons, or states, had rejected the “citizen service initiative” by wide margins. That meant it was defeated, because proposals need a majority of both voters and cantons to pass.

Voters also heavily rejected a separate proposal to impose a new national tax on individual donations or inheritances of more than 50 million francs ($62 million), with the revenues to be used to fight the impact of climate change and help Switzerland meet its ambitions to have net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

  • SpongyAneurysm@feddit.orgEnglish
    1·
    15 hours ago

    You don’t pay VAT/GST on the money, you pay it on the product’s price

    And how do you pay that price? With money. This is pure sophism.

    And, duh, you can avoid paying taxes if you cheat… that’s not exclusive to VAT.

    And you are further elaborating my point. You will be taxed on different occasions even when the money or asset doesn’t even change ownership. That’s my whole point. The argument that you already paid taxes on some money isn’t really a solid point against inheritance tax, it’s a common occurence in many areas of life. Yet it always comes up when inheritance tax is discussed.

    Just like your example with the inheritance of a small home that will ruin the recipient. The example is always constructed in bad faith with a lousy tax policy in the first place. No one is trying to ruin the average joe who happens to inherit grampas house. A better design, and the one all supporters of inheritance tax I know argue for, is one with a reasonably high allowance, to avoid these scenarios, and even if you cross the allowance threshhold by a little bit, you only have to pay the fictious 20% on the amount exceeding the allowance. So say we have an (unreasonably low, but just for the sake of the example) allowance of 400K, now you inherit that 500K property you’ll have to pay (500K-400K)x0.2=20K.

    If you wanted to protect small inheritances even more, you could design a progressive tax, too.

    This, with a much more reasonable allowance sounds a bit like your so called ‘better solution’.

    • sonofearth@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      12 hours ago

      This, with a much more reasonable allowance sounds a bit like your so called ‘better solution’.

      That is exactly what I said. Couldn’t put it in better words. Exemptions. Only difference I said is exempt the amount upto, let’s say, what a family of 3 people needs for let’s say 3 years. That way the inheriter won’t have to pay a superficial tax while still maintaining a livable lifestyle. Charging inheritance tax on poor people (however little) puts a lot of burden on them for something they are not willingly earning or purchasing. Charging millionaires and billionaires with inheritance tax is better as there will be a continuous cycle of wealth redistribution and thus they won’t be able abuse their powers. But wealth tax is more efficient that way as it would prevent someone becoming obscenely wealthy in the first place.

      Taxing the poor has never worked, they will hoard more unaccounted whatever wealth they have to avoid those taxes rather than owning real estate, shared, bonds, etc and participating in the economy. No one likes paying taxes — especially on something which they are not willingly earning or purchasing.

      And how do you pay that price? With money. This is pure sophism.

      Also you pay VAT and GST only once — so it is not an example of double taxation. These have been designed in such a way that the only the final customer pays tax on it as the final entity in the supply chain. Whatever VAT/GST the retailer, supplier and the service provider paid is refunded by the government in the form of ITC (Input Tax Credit).

      • SpongyAneurysm@feddit.orgEnglish
        1·
        5 hours ago

        Charging millionaires and billionaires with inheritance tax is better as there will be a continuous cycle of wealth redistribution and thus they won’t be able abuse their powers. But wealth tax is more efficient that way as it would prevent someone becoming obscenely wealthy in the first place.

        And that is the point of inheritance tax. There might be other means to achieve that same goal, but I suspect inheritance tax is politically more realistic. In our western societies theres a deeply ingrained narrative of ‘rags to riches’ and how the rich earned their money because they contribute so much to society and worked hard for it, coupled with the wishful thinking of ‘it might be me some day’. I don’t have to preach, how flawed those ideas are, but it is much easier within that ideology to argue for an inheritance tax, where it is obvious that the heir didn’t have to do anything to really deserve it.

        Wealth tax needs a bit more of a marxist understanding of economic mechanisms.