Federal Act
on Value Added Tax
(Value Added Tax Act, VAT Act)

¹ A re­mis­sion may be gran­ted for all or part of the im­port tax, if:

a.

goods held in the cus­tody of the FO­CBS or made sub­ject to a trans­it pro­ced­ure (Art. 49 CustA¹⁴⁴), a cus­toms ware­hous­ing pro­ced­ure (Art. 50–57 CustA), a tem­por­ary ad­mis­sion pro­ced­ure (Art. 58 CustA) or a pro­ced­ure of in­ward pro­cessing (Art. 59 CustA) are des­troyed in whole or in part by chance, act of God or with of­fi­cial ap­prov­al;

b.

goods re­leased for free cir­cu­la­tion by of­fi­cial de­cree are des­troyed in whole or in part or are again ex­por­ted from Swiss ter­rit­ory;

c.

a sub­sequent claim in terms of Art­icle 85 CustA would, in view of spe­cial cir­cum­stances, con­sti­tute an un­reas­on­able bur­den on the tax­able per­son un­der Art­icle 51;

d.

the per­son re­spons­ible for the cus­toms de­clar­a­tion (e.g. the for­ward­ing agent) can­not re­cov­er the tax from the im­port­er be­cause of the lat­ter's in­solv­ency, and the im­port­er was at the time of the ac­cept­ance of the cus­toms de­clar­a­tion re­gistered as a tax­able per­son on Swiss ter­rit­ory; in­solv­ency of the im­port­er must be as­sumed if re­pay­ment of the debt due to the per­son re­spons­ible for the cus­toms de­clar­a­tion ap­pears to be ser­i­ously at risk.

² The Dir­ect­or­ate Gen­er­al of Cus­toms de­cides on the tax re­mis­sion on writ­ten ap­plic­a­tion sup­por­ted by the ne­ces­sary evid­ence.

³ The peri­od for sub­mis­sion of an ap­plic­a­tion is:

a.

on as­sess­ment with un­con­di­tion­al im­port tax debt: one year after the is­sue of the im­port doc­u­ment with which the im­port tax was as­sessed;

b.

on as­sess­ment with con­di­tion­al im­port tax debt: one year after con­clu­sion of the cus­toms pro­ced­ure chosen.