It’s not uncommon for French residents to pop over the border to Switzerland – either daily for work or less regularly for shopping, visiting or skiing. So how will the proposed new Swiss ‘tourist transit tax’ on foreign motorists affect these visits?
Members of the Swiss parliament are pushing ahead with a tax aimed at visitors using the country’s road network.
“Our national roads, especially the major Alpine routes, are congested with transit traffic that brings no benefit to our country,” according to MP Marco Chiesa, who instigated this measure in the parliament.
“It is unacceptable that Switzerland continues to suffer the consequences of this parasitic traffic.”
What he and his supporters are proposing is a ‘tourist transit tax’, levied specifically on people who enter the country by road. Rail and air travellers are exempt.
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The measure is still going through the Swiss parliamentary process – although it seems to have broad cross-party support, the country’s Transport Minister has pointed out that it would entail a number of administrative hurdles, such as enhanced monitoring of all border-crossing points.
We do, however, know the broad outline of it – which is that it applies only to people who enter Switzerland by road from one country and then exit Switzerland into another country, without stopping in Switzerland itself.
Because Switzerland is a small country which has borders with five countries, that’s not a wildly unlikely scenario.
Its geographical position means that people do pass through if, for example, they are driving from Germany to Italy for a holiday, or passing through Switzerland from France to get to the Austrian ski resorts.
But the two-country requirements means that this would not affect French residents making day-trips in and out of Switzerland, since they are exiting into the same country.
It may, however, affect some holidaymakers, assuming that the Swiss manage to agree on the exact format of the tax and get it through the parliament.