Exclusive – against its own law, the canton of Vaud lightened the taxes of wealthy taxpayers for thirteen years

Posted on April 16, 2025 at 6:08 p.m. / Modified April 16, 2025 at 19:04.

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For thirteen long years, the canton of Vaud did not respect its own law on the tax shield, reveals Time. Since its introduction in 2009, the administration has not taken into account all the income for the calculation of the shield, with the consequence that wealthy taxpayers have been less taxed than they should have been. Tens of millions of francs have potentially escaped the state funds. The facts took place at the time when Pascal Broulis was responsible for finance, and this poor application of the law was only rectified a few months before his departure in 2022, when the error was known at least since a judgment of the 2018 Federal Court (TF) and should have been corrected immediately.

“Only an internal investigation would make it possible to understand the initial error on the one hand and its rehearsal over more than a decade on the other hand, as well as the period of time elapsed between the judgment of the TF and the change of practice involved four years later”, wrote Yves Noël, professor at the University of Lausanne (UNIL) in a notice of law of May 1, 2024. This analysis is one of those commissioned by Valérie Dittli, Canton, who wanted to understand how to modify the tax shield. Thanks to the information law, Time Was these exclusive documents, which show multiple errors from the Vaudois authorities. Our revelations throw a new light on the conflict between Valérie Dittli and the director of taxation, Marinette Kellenberger, who made the detention of information towards her minister, according to the report commissioned by the Council of State to Jean Studer.