Keystone
Like the Zurich resident, the Winterthur city council now wants to make full use of the canton’s scope when determining the value added tax. He applied for the tax rate for zoning and rezoning to be set at 40 percent. The municipal council will decide on this.
At the cantonal level, the law on value added adjustment will come into force in 2021. The municipalities have a certain amount of leeway when it comes to the municipal structure, especially with regard to the tax rate. This is applied uniformly across the canton to the added value reduced by 100,000 francs.
With a tax rate of 40 percent, the Winterthur city council goes to the upper limit set by the canton, as it announced on Friday. Owners of small properties up to 1200 square meters in size should not pay any levy. This value corresponds to the cantonal lower limit.
Homeowner Resistance
The city council did not take into account the objection raised by the Winterthur Region Homeowners Association, which it raised in the public participation process. He applied for the planned setting of a municipal surplus value adjustment to be dispensed with entirely or to be set at a maximum of 20 percent.
In the previous practice of the city of Winterthur, compensation in the order of 35 to 40 percent was contractually secured, wrote the city council. That is why, in his opinion, a levy of only 20 percent would be “far too low”.
Re-zoning and zoning would result in considerable added value for landowners. At the same time, there would often be considerable costs for development and other public infrastructures. The city government emphasized that these should not be borne unilaterally by the public sector.
Rather, the costs should be borne by those who benefit from a planning advantage through zoning and re-zoning: owners of their properties gain in value.
The submission now goes to the municipal council. He will decide whether the building and zone regulations (BZO) will actually be equipped with the maximum tax of 40 percent or whether the value-added compensation should be made more owner-friendly.
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