Thanks to this first national e-government solution, data can be processed faster and easier, making work for the Federal Tax Authority, which was previously responsible for assessments in many cantons, far easier. Tax authorities require the data to assess taxes on capital and to determine income taxation and calculate any anticipatory tax rebate claims.

“A process that a few years ago involved huge staffing levels can now be run at the press of a button,” says Stephan Stauber, head of the Cantonal Tax Authority in Basel City. “With the introduction of Securities Listing Control, as realised by GFT, all tax values, both of listed and unlisted firms, can now be accessed centrally by the cantons for their assessments. On 1st January 2008, 1,857,374 tax values were imported for listed companies and a further 687,708 for unlisted firms for release in the system.”

WVK is a joint project involved all Swiss cantons and the Federal Tax Authority with the aim of standardising the taxation of securities listings. In it, the government-to-government (G2G) solution by GFT forms the centrally harmonised information core. It was designed and developed by GFT in close collaboration with a consortium of all cantonal tax authorities and the Federal Tax Authority, in a process that took into account the cantons’ wide-ranging independence in each project phase. The result is a powerful information platform for assessing all companies.

The harmonised securities assessment of unlisted companies was centre stage in the development of the module for corporate assessments. The developers concentrated on producing a guide that would be valid throughout Switzerland and that took into account cantonal particularities. According to the guide, the assessment is based on the company’s balance sheet and profit and loss statement. The latest version connects the cantonal partner systems to provide the data needed to assess corporate bodies. The XML interface to the cantonal partner system makes it easy to connect existing systems.

The next step will be to extend the WVK by a corresponding interface for assessing natural persons. “By closely collaborating with the tax authorities over the last six years we have been able to open up a new area in e-government. Our team has a great deal of expertise in securities and assessing unlisted firms that convinced our customers,” says Hansjörg Widmer, Managing Director of GFT Technologies (Switzerland) AG