Federal Court declares vote on marriage penalty initiative invalid

Due to the so-called marriage penalty, married couples are fiscally disadvantaged compared to unmarried couples. The initiators of the popular initiative "For Marriage and Family - Against the Marriage Penalty" demanded the elimination of this unequal treatment, but it was narrowly rejected in 2016. Now, the Federal Court has declared the vote invalid.

What is the marriage penalty?

In contrast to cohabiting couples, a legally unequal aggregation of incomes occurs for spouses. This affects the tax assessment negatively (increasing) the progression and thus leads to a proportionally higher tax contribution than before marriage. Particularly dual-earning married couples are affected by this increased tax burden. The option of a dual-earner deduction, available since 2008, has contributed to the improvement of this issue, but was not able to completely eliminate the unequal treatment. Also, a married couple receives a maximum of 150% of the AHV pensions compared to an unmarried couple.

Federal Court declares the vote on the marriage penalty initiative invalid

The popular initiative "For Marriage and Family - Against the Marriage Penalty," which was voted on February 28, 2016, demanded the complete elimination of the marriage penalty. Married couples should be treated the same as unmarried ones, both in terms of taxes and social security contributions. The prohibition of unequal treatment of married and cohabiting couples should be written into the constitution. Although the initiative was accepted by the people, its adoption failed in the Council of States. On June 15, 2018, the Federal Council announced that there was a mistake in the voting materials at that time: Instead of the stated 80,000 dual-earner couples, there are about 454,000 such couples in Switzerland. The projected federal revenue shortfall of approximately 1.15 billion CHF if the initiative were accepted was also incorrect. The initiators immediately filed an election complaint with the Federal Court, and on April 10, 2019, the verdict followed: For the first time, the Federal Court upheld an electoral complaint and declared the vote on the popular initiative "For Marriage and Family - Against the Marriage Penalty" invalid, since the discovered defects were significant and could have actually affected the election results. Also, the legal certainty would not be endangered by the consequences of an invalidity declaration, as the legal situation remains unchanged.

Now, it is up to the Federal Council to decide how to proceed with the initiative. Basically, there are two options: The voting procedure is discussed again in the parliamentary consultations or a new vote is set.

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