Taxing the exchange: stamp duties before 1917

Cantonal stamp duties

Taxes on securities transactions have been a recurring theme in the history of the Swiss exchanges. Stamp duties had been known in the Swiss cantons since the Helvetic period, when they were introduced on French revolutionary models. In 1803 the Diet reserved authority over stamp matters to the cantons.¹ The cantons used this power in different ways. Some taxed the issue of securities, some the documents recording transactions and some the turnover of the exchange. The association of former Zurich ring traders notes that the cantons imposed a turnover tax on their exchanges.² According to the Federal Tax Administration, the revenue from cantonal stamp duties remained modest before the federal tax, at about three million francs in total.³

Differences in stamp duties between cantons influenced the competition between exchanges. A trader who could choose where to execute a transaction had an incentive to choose the exchange with the lowest tax burden. The regulation of the exchange and its taxation were thus closely connected. A canton that wished to keep its exchange competitive had to keep its duties moderate. The cantonal fees on exchange trading that the Zurich law of 1912 linked to the canton’s obligation to provide premises belong to the same logic, since the canton derived an income from a market whose prosperity it had to maintain.

The federal stamp duty of 1917

The fiscal pressure of the First World War brought the stamp duty to the federal level. On 13 May 1917, a narrow majority of 53.2 per cent of the Swiss voters approved a new federal power to levy stamp duties. The first federal stamp duty law entered into force on 1 April 1918, with expected annual revenues of 12 million francs.⁴ The Historisches Lexikon records that Article 41bis of the Federal Constitution transferred the power over stamp duties to the Confederation in 1917. Today the Confederation levies an issue duty on shares and bonds, a securities transfer tax and a stamp duty on insurance premiums.⁵

Although the federal stamp duty lies outside the period of this chapter, its roots lie within it. The debates of the pre-war years about the taxation of securities transactions, the cantonal turnover taxes on the exchanges and the experience of foreign exchange taxes shaped the federal solution. Its long-term effects are well known to practitioners. The securities transfer tax (Umsatzabgabe) became one of the main competitive burdens of the Swiss market. Its gradual reduction and the exemptions granted for foreign transactions and certain market participants were recurring themes of Swiss financial market policy in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The sensitivity of the Zurich market to transaction taxes, which the cantonal period had already demonstrated, has never disappeared.

Notes

1. HLS, Conrad Stockar, “Stempelsteuer”, version of 14.02.2012, http://www.hls-dhs-dss.ch/textes/d/D13772.php. ↩
2. VeZR, “Die Börse”, https://vezr.ch/DIE-BOeRSE/. ↩
3. Eidgenössische Steuerverwaltung, “100 Jahre Eidgenössische Steuerverwaltung – Stempelabgaben”, https://www.estv2.admin.ch/jubi/steuerarten-stempel-d.htm. ↩
4. Eidgenössische Steuerverwaltung, “100 Jahre Eidgenössische Steuerverwaltung – Stempelabgaben”, https://www.estv2.admin.ch/jubi/steuerarten-stempel-d.htm. ↩
5. HLS, Stockar, “Stempelsteuer”, http://www.hls-dhs-dss.ch/textes/d/D13772.php. ↩

For general information only. This article does not constitute legal or tax advice, does not replace advice on an individual case and creates no lawyer-client relationship. It reflects the legal position as of September 2025.