New inheritance tax idea has low public support, survey finds

Some 67% of Swiss are against a left-wing initiative aiming to raise inheritance taxes on the wealthy in order to finance climate measures, a survey has found. + Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox Handed in last February, the initiative calls for a 50% inheritance tax on sums of CHF50 million ($56 million) and above to finance the ecological transformation of the Swiss economy. According to calculations by initiators – the Young Socialists (JUSO) party – this tax would raise around CHF6 billion a year. Federal and cantonal authorities could then invest this money in climate protection measures, JUSO says. According to the representative survey by the DemoSCOPE institute, commissioned by online news site Watson and published on Thursday, 67% of those questioned said “no” to the initiative, while 6% “tended towards no”. Conversely, 21% said “yes” and 6% “tended towards yes”. Less than 1% gave no answer or said they didn’t know. + Could a hike in inheritance ...