New Swiss VAT-Regulation for digital platforms

On June 16, 2023, the Swiss Parliament adopted the partial revision of the Value Added Tax Act, including the new regulation that will apply to digital platforms active in Switzerland and Liechtenstein. This regulation is expected to enter into force at the beginning of 2025.

Based on the new law, digital platforms will be considered as having supplied all deliveries of goods that they have been facilitating (as deemed supplier). This applies to both domestic and foreign platforms.

Therefore, platforms and other mail-order companies as well as transport and logistics companies (postal services, courier companies) might face changes in their processes and systems relating to the handling of Swiss VAT.

To facilitate these changes, the Federal Tax Administrations (FTA) has published a preliminary draft of the future VAT guidelines on its website:
https://www.estv.admin.ch/estv/en/home/value-added-tax/vat-specialist-information/vat-webbased-publications/vat-drafts.html

​​​​​​​These draft guidelines aim to provide an overview of the new regulation and its interpretation by the FTA. Please note that the revised VAT Ordinance on which these draft guidelines are based, has not yet been approved by the competent Federal Council. Therefore, changes cannot be excluded. However, to give time to prepare for the changes, the FTA has published this draft.