The case

L’initiative pour l’avenir, up for a nationwide vote on 30 November, has revived a familiar question: How does Switzerland’s inheritance tax regime compare with the one of its OECD peers?

Source: Text from Le Temps 14.11.2025 – heavily abridged

The commentary

While Switzerland does not tax inheritances dramatically less than others, its highly decentralized cantonal system and the widespread exemptions granted to children give it a distinct profile.

According to a 2021 OECD report, the global trend since the 1980s has been towards raising inheritance tax allowances, even as several countries have gone in the opposite direction and abolished the tax entirely. Austria scrapped its inheritance tax in 2008, followed by the Czech Republic and Norway in 2014 (though a “wealth tax” was introduced). In the United States, the exemption threshold, which is adjusted on an annual basis, will reach USD 13.9 million in 2025, thus skyrocketing from USD 5.4 million a decade earlier.

South Korea and Japan are in pole position and levy some of the world’s steepest inheritance taxes on direct heirs. The two countries’s systems are progressive, with South Korea’s top rate hitting 50 % and Japan’s reaching 55 %. Both countries offer sizeable allowances: In Japan, for instance, 30 million Yen (about CHF 155,000) is deducted from the estate, along with an additional 2 million Yen (CHF 10,000) per heir. The 55 % rate applies to the share of an inheritance exceeding 45 million Yen (around CHF 230,000).

France, meanwhile, resembles Switzerland in the range of its top marginal rates, which can climb to 60 %, but this wis where the similarities end. The 60 % rate applies only to distant or unrelated heirs. For children and other direct descendants, the scale is progressive and capped at 45 % on estates above € 1 805 677 8 million (roughly CHF 1.7 million), with a € 100,000 allowance for each child.