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Sektor
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Friendly Fire

While the non-profit sector is gaining political momentum at cantonal level with the active support of the FDP and, as a result, important cantons want to promote their own foundations, federal authorities are campaigning internationally for the interests of foundations and NPOs and parliament is providing appropriate exemptions for non-profit organisations from inappropriate laws, the FDP is once again undermining the non-profit sector at federal level.

PROFONDS

A lot has happened in the sector in recent years. In addi­tion to two legis­la­tive revi­si­ons, the canton of Zurich adjus­ted its rest­ric­tive prac­tice regar­ding the compen­sa­tion of foun­da­tion boards and asso­cia­tion boards at the begin­ning of 2024 and is now consciously promo­ting Zurich as a foun­da­tion loca­tion. FDP govern­ment coun­cil­lor Carmen Walker Späh took the lead in this endea­vour. Such initia­ti­ves have been in place in Basel and Geneva for seve­ral years, also always with the active support of the Libe­rals. Such an initia­tive was also recently laun­ched in the canton of Lucerne. The initia­tor: FDP Lucerne.

Toge­ther with the State Secre­ta­riat for Inter­na­tio­nal Finan­cial Matters (SIF), we as asso­cia­ti­ons have also mana­ged to ensure that chari­ta­ble foun­da­ti­ons and NPOs are exempt from the auto­ma­tic exch­ange of infor­ma­tion in tax matters in accordance with OECD guide­lines. The addi­tio­nal admi­nis­tra­tive burden would other­wise have been enorm­ous. We were also able to ensure in Parlia­ment that chari­ta­ble foun­da­ti­ons and NPOs are exempt from the obli­ga­tion to be ente­red in the regis­ter of bene­fi­cial owners, simply because neither foun­da­ti­ons nor NPOs have such persons. In all the cases listed, parties, autho­ri­ties and parlia­men­ta­ri­ans have spoken out in favour of the non-profit sector.

Against this back­drop, the motion submit­ted by the FDP on 19 Decem­ber 2024 entit­led ‘Streng­thening the chari­ta­ble status of tax-exempt orga­ni­sa­ti­ons’ seems all the more like friendly fire. This is because it has one goal: chari­ta­ble orga­ni­sa­ti­ons either lose their tax exemp­tion in full or in part, which is exis­ten­tial for them, or they decide to no longer parti­ci­pate in the poli­ti­cal discourse. The aim is to exclude non-profit orga­ni­sa­ti­ons from this discourse, which leads to an impo­ve­rish­ment of demo­cra­tic dialogue. 

We are ther­e­fore campaig­ning vigo­rously for the motion – as propo­sed by the Fede­ral Coun­cil – to be rejected.

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