Partners Group’s Gantner Calls for Swiss Tax on Firms EU Hiring

(Bloomberg) — Partners Group Holding AG co-founder Alfred Gantner is calling for Swiss companies that hire foreign workers to be taxed and for the resulting revenues to be distributed among the population as way to reform the country’s immigration system.

In an interview with Swiss paper Schweiz am Wochenende, the billionaire said that at the moment it doesn’t matter to Partners Group whether it recruits someone in Bologna, Frankfurt of Paris for the company’s office in the Swiss canton of Zug. But if companies would incur additional costs for recruiting overseas, they would have a genuine preference for Swiss talent, Gantner added.

The proposal calls for employers who hire workers from the European Union to pay an immigration tax involving up to 5% of the employee’s salary over five years. That means a company hiring an EU worker on an annual salary of 81,000 Swiss francs ($98,000) would be taxed around 20,000 francs over the period, Gantner said. The tax would be as low as 1% for lower salaries.

Gantner along with the other Partners Group co-founders have formed the Kompass Europa organization, which campaigns against closer Swiss ties with the EU.

Gantner calculates the proposed tax could generate around 1.35 billion Swiss francs annually, which he wants to flow back to the population. If focused on the lowest earners, it could result in around 4,000 francs annually for a four-person household, he told the newspaper.

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