25 years of Swiss VAT – What a journey! Part 2: How it all began or “Whoever invented that was a genius!”

With this blog –Part 2 in our series to celebrate 25 years of VAT in Switzerland – we take a look back on how it all began. Whilst customs duties have existed for very long time, the concept of a tax levied on consumption is relatively recent. We only need to go back to the 17th century to, when the first consumption tax was introduced for financing an army and to 1918, when so-called gross VAT was introduced in Germany, the precursor of net VAT with input VAT deduction that was introduced in Europe in the late 1960’s.

Source: Deloitte CH

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