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swiss-list: The Swiss military tax - my recent experience

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swiss-list: The Swiss military tax - my recent experience

From: Erik Bruchez <click for textversion of email address >
Date: Sat, 25 Jun 2005 19:19:45 +0200

All,

The write-up below is also available online here:

http://erik.bruchez.name/roller/page/ebruchez/20050625#the_swiss_military_tax

Enjoy,

-Erik

--
The Swiss army is a funny thing. Well, that's a way of speaking, of 
course. Switzerland, in spite of being a small country (about 7.5 
million people at the time of writing), and neutral since the 17th 
century, has a long military tradition. Swiss children learn in school 
of the legendary William Tell, and of how young kids were trained to 
fight since an early age. The Swiss kicked the Habsburg out in 1315 and 
became an independent country, fought off the French and the Italians as 
well, until they got our own ass kicked by the French in Marignan in 
1515. They have a long tradition of working as mercenaries as well. And 
finally, everybody knows about the Swiss Guards of the Vatican, who have 
been in this role from 1506 to the current days.
Nowadays one fairly well-known particularity of the Swiss army is that 
it is mostly a militia army. Every Swiss male is supposed to serve in 
the army for a total of about 300 days, split between an initial 
recruits school of about 120 days, then doing some further training 
typically every other year (details may vary). You can postpone training 
if you have good reasons, like university exams and the like. But every 
Swiss male who is required to serve in the army but doesn't must pay a 
tax, which amounts to 2% of his income (3% since 2004).
Now when you move abroad, as I did back in 1997, you notify the army of 
this fact and you obtain a military permission. Here is the catch 
though: you have to pay the military tax for the first three full years 
of your stay abroad (you don't pay the tax for the following years).
When you leave your country, this is the last thing on your mind. When I 
moved back to Switzerland in late 2004, I first got in the mail a letter 
asking me if I was volunteering to join back the army (after six years 
abroad, you no longer need to serve in the army, unless you explicitly 
volunteer for it). Of course I denied this kind offer. But then a few 
months ago I got in the mail some forms related to paying my tax for the 
years 1998 and 2000.
This caused a little shock, since I didn't even remember that I was 
supposed to be paying that tax. It is also hard to comprehend why this 
tax has to be paid, since as a Swiss working in the US, you pay your 
taxes in the country where you earn your money, based on a treaty 
between both countries. The military tax is an exception to this rule.
After receiving those tax forms I quickly added up numbers and the 
worst-case scenario amounted to quite a lot of money. A good citizen, I 
declared my actual income, providing copies of my W-2 forms. The good 
news, it turned out, is that I have to pay only for the years 1998 and 
2000 (because I was not required to serve in 1999); that the 2% rate 
applies to me, not the 3% rate; that you get a discount depending on the 
number of days of service you have done in the past (the recruits 
school, for example); and finally, that after all I did not make that 
much money in 1998, as I was working in my first job in the US, and less 
in 2000, when we were working on starting up Orbeon.
In the end I owe about CHF 2000. It could have been much worse. But as a 
resident of the United States for seven years, quite a lot of my money 
went into financing the US military, and I wish my tax money could go 
help people who need it rather than the Swiss army.
--
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Received on Sat Jun 25 2005 - 17:35:54 PDT
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