Tag Archives: Editor’s Choice

This week, Bell, a Swiss meat processor, announced an investment in Dutch synthetic meat start-up Mosa Meat. A burger made from Cultured Beef Mosa Meat, a leader in the market of cultured beef, was co-founded by Mark Post of the University of Maastricht, who is considered to be the global pioneer in the production of cultured meat. Rather than a meat substitute, cultured meat is meat grown in vitro. Muscle cells are extracted from an animal and placed in a solution that feeds them and allows...

Net migration into Switzerland from the EU was down by 11% last year, according to the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO). © Arturo Osorno | Dreamstime.com In 2017, a net 31,250 people from the EU and EFTA moved to Switzerland. And, with a 4% decline in the number arriving over the five months to May 2018, the fall looks set to continue. For some nationalities the net flow went into reverse. In 2017, more Portuguese left Switzerland than arrived. The fall appears to be related to...

In Switzerland, tax is largely determined by the canton of residence. The range of tax rates is wide. In 2017, a single person earning CHF 100,000 paid only CHF 7,592 in the canton of Zug but CHF 19,233 in the canton of Neuchâtel, more than 2.5 times as much. Someone married with children earning the same amount paid CHF 920 in Zug and CHF 9,249 in Neuchâtel, more than 10 times as much. The chart above shows tax rates by canton in 2017 for single and married people with two children...

With TV recording there’s no need to miss programmes just because they’re on at the wrong time. And, when it’s time to watch them, it’s easy to fast forward through the adverts, something that can’t be done when watching live. ©-Sebastian-L-_-Dreamstime.com_ - Click to enlarge In Switzerland, television recording is offered by big distributers, such as Swisscom, Sunrise and UPC. Broadcasters don’t provide it. While...

With TV recording there’s no need to miss programmes just because they’re on at the wrong time. And, when it’s time to watch them, it’s easy to fast forward through the adverts, something that can’t be done when watching live. © Sebastian L | Dreamstime.com In Switzerland, television recording is offered by big distributers, such as Swisscom, Sunrise and UPC. Broadcasters don’t provide it. While fast forwarding adverts is great for viewers, broadcasters, who claim to have missed out on CHF 87...

© Brad Calkins | Dreamstime.com Historically, Switzerland has offered certain foreign companies special preferential tax deals in order to attract them. In response to international pressure, the current system is to be phased out replacing preferential tax rates with lower universal ones in the hope that these companies will stay. The central challenge is how to cover the tax revenue lost when companies taxed at the...

Historically, Switzerland has offered certain foreign companies special preferential tax deals in order to attract them. © Brad Calkins | Dreamstime.com In response to international pressure, the current system is to be phased out replacing preferential tax rates with lower universal ones in the hope that these companies will stay. The central challenge is how to cover the tax revenue lost when companies taxed at the main rate switch to new lower universal tax rates. The federal government...

In May 2014, Switzerland voted against a minimum wage of CHF 22 an hour. At some point voters in the canton of Geneva will get to vote on a similar initiative, which would apply only in the canton. Similar to the federal vote, which was rejected by 76.3% of Swiss voters, the plan calls for a minimum hourly wage of CHF 23 ($US 23.40). Based on a 40-hour week, this works out at around CHF 4,000 per month. Vote organisers in Geneva collected 7,700 signatures, far more that the 5,227 minimum...

On 25 June 2018, the city of Zug, the town at the heart of Switzerland’s crypto valley, started testing a voting system based on blockchain technology. © Denis Linine | Dreamstime.com During the trial, which runs until 1 July 2018, around 200 voters will cast non-binding municipal votes on mock questions in a trial designed to identify any bugs in a system built by the company Luxsoft and the computer science department of Lucerne’s University of Applied Sciences. In the Tweet below, Dolfi...

Currently, across EU and EFTA countries, unemployment benefits are paid by the country of residence. Last week, the EU announced plans to make the country of employment pay unemployment benefits instead. © Meryll | Dreamstime.com This change could be costly for Swiss cantons with large numbers of cross-border workers, workers who live in the EU but work in Switzerland. In March 2018, there were 316,000 workers in Switzerland living outside the country. Cantons with the most cross-border...