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Comment by ryanbertrand | Hacker News Reader

Switzerland makes home owners pay taxes as if they rented the house out for 12 months each year. This could add a nice chunk to your net cost of owning.

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That's the reason why Switzerland has such a high per capita debt [1]. You can deduct your interest payments from the tax payments. So there is an interest to stay indebted for homeowners. My parents own a house that they inherited from my grandparents including a debt but both wouldn't pay off the mortgage because of tax reasons.

[1] https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/wealth-ranking_swiss-are-world-...

Wouldn't it be more accurate to say they don't give special treatment to home owners over renters? Sounds more fair to me.

Which I guess most landlords would simply pass on to the tenants?

If they rent it they pay income tax anyway (or rather the company that owns the place does). The "virtual rent" added to income is for people who own the place where they live.

Switzerland is not very home ownership friendly, at least there are very little tax incentives for it (personally I'd rather have people invest their wealth into productive things rather than real estate, so I find it good). In large cities most places are owned by banks/insurances/other real estate companies and rented out.

I wouldn't call not giving special privileges to home owners over renters unfriendly, I'd call it neutral and fair.

They didn't say it was unfriendly, they said it was not friendly. So, neutral.

That's a distinction without a difference, they mean the same thing. Not friendly does not imply neutral, it implies not friendly. If I said don't walk through that neighborhood it's not friendly, you would not interpret that as saying it's neutral.

Nope, that's not how prices are set.

https://www.quora.com/How-does-a-land-value-tax-not-create-d...

It's rent adjusted. So if everyone passes it on to the tennants they end up paying more tax.

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