Swiss business law uses terms that have no exact equivalent in English, Chinese or Arabic, and misunderstandings about them are a frequent source of costly mistakes. The glossary collected here explains the key terms of Swiss company, banking, tax and procedural law in plain language, with their German, French or Italian original and their English equivalent. It is intended as a reference for readers of the other articles and for anyone who has to read a Swiss contract, register extract, tax ruling or court decision and needs to know what a term actually means.
Swiss business law is written in German, French and Italian, and many of its terms have no exact equivalent in English or in the languages of Asia, the Middle East and Africa. Misreading a term in a contract, a register extract or a tax ruling can be expensive.
Swiss federal law is published in German, French and Italian, and all three versions are equally authentic. English translations exist for many statutes, yet they are provided for information only and have no legal force. Anyone who relies on an English text should therefore check the original wording whenever a question turns on the precise meaning of a term.
Some Swiss terms look familiar and still mean something different. The board of directors of a Swiss company limited by shares, the Verwaltungsrat or conseil d'administration, combines supervision and management in a way that differs from the two-tier boards of Germany or the boards of common law jurisdictions. Debt collection, known as Betreibung or poursuite, follows a procedure that has no direct counterpart elsewhere.
Tax vocabulary causes similar difficulties. The Verrechnungssteuer, or impôt anticipé, is usually rendered as withholding tax, although it functions largely as a security for the correct declaration of income by Swiss residents. Knowing such distinctions helps foreign readers ask the right questions of their banks, auditors and authorities, and it reduces the risk of costly misunderstandings in contracts and correspondence.
The glossary explains the key terms of Swiss company, banking, tax and procedural law in plain English, with the original German, French or Italian expression, so that readers of the other articles and of Swiss documents know what a term actually means.