Federal Act on Value Added Tax

In this Act:

a.

Swiss ter­rit­ory means the ter­rit­ory of the Swiss Con­fed­er­a­tion to­geth­er with the cus­toms en­claves ac­cord­ing to Art­icle 3 para­graph 2 of the Cus­toms Act of 18 March 2005¹ (CustA).

b.

Goods means mov­able and im­mov­able ob­jects and elec­tri­city, gas, heat­ing, re­fri­ger­a­tion and the like.

c.

Sup­ply means the con­ces­sion of a us­able eco­nom­ic as­set to a third party in ex­pect­a­tion of a con­sid­er­a­tion, even if it is re­quired by law or based on an of­fi­cial or­der.

d.

Sup­ply of goods means:

1.

the trans­fer of the power to dis­pose of a good com­mer­cially in one’s own name;

2.

the de­liv­ery of a good on which work has been per­formed, even if the good is not altered by the work, but only tested, cal­ib­rated, reg­u­lated, checked for its func­tion or has been treated in an­oth­er way;

3.

mak­ing a good avail­able for use or ex­ploit­a­tion.

e.

Sup­ply of ser­vices means every sup­ply that is not a sup­ply of goods; a sup­ply of ser­vices is also made if:

1.

in­tan­gible as­sets and rights are made avail­able;

2.

an ac­tion is omit­ted or an ac­tion or a situ­ation is tol­er­ated.

f.

Con­sid­er­a­tion means an as­set which the re­cip­i­ent or, in place of the re­cip­i­ent, a third party ex­pends in re­turn for re­ceipt of a sup­ply.

g.²

Sov­er­eign activ­ity means an activ­ity of a pub­lic au­thor­ity or of a per­son or or­gan­isa­tion act­ing for a pub­lic au­thor­ity without busi­ness char­ac­ter, in par­tic­u­lar where it is not mar­ket­able and not in com­pet­i­tion with activ­it­ies of private sup­pli­ers, even if fees, con­tri­bu­tions or oth­er charges are levied for it.

h.³

Closely re­lated per­sons means:

1.

the own­ers of at least 20 per cent of the nom­in­al or ba­sic cap­it­al of a busi­ness or of an equi­val­ent par­ti­cip­a­tion in a part­ner­ship, or per­sons as­so­ci­ated with them;

2.

found­a­tions and as­so­ci­ations with which there is a par­tic­u­larly close eco­nom­ic, con­trac­tu­al or per­son­al re­la­tion­ship; pen­sion schemes are not re­garded as closely re­lated per­sons.

i.⁴

dona­tion means a vol­un­tary con­tri­bu­tion with the in­ten­tion of en­rich­ing the re­cip­i­ent without ex­pect­a­tion of a con­sid­er­a­tion in the VAT sense; a con­tri­bu­tion also qual­i­fies as a dona­tion if:

1.

the con­tri­bu­tion is men­tioned on one or more oc­ca­sions in a pub­lic­a­tion in neut­ral form, even if the name or the logo of the donor is used;

2.

it is a con­tri­bu­tion by pass­ive mem­bers and by pat­rons to as­so­ci­ations or to char­it­able or­gan­isa­tions; con­tri­bu­tions by pat­rons to char­it­able or­gan­isa­tions are also deemed to be dona­tions if the char­it­able or­gan­isa­tion vol­un­tar­ily grants its pat­rons ad­vant­ages in terms of its art­icles provided it in­forms the pat­ron that they have no right to be gran­ted the ad­vant­ages.

j.

Char­it­able or­gan­isa­tion means an or­gan­isa­tion which ful­fils the re­quire­ments that ap­ply for Dir­ect Fed­er­al Tax pur­su­ant to Art­icle 56 let­ter g DFTA.

k.

In­voice means any doc­u­ment by which the con­sid­er­a­tion for a sup­ply is settled with a third party, ir­re­spect­ive of how the doc­u­ment is titled in busi­ness trans­ac­tions.