City of Lucerne voters approve tax cut
Published: Sunday, Jan 21st 2024, 13:50
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The city of Lucerne can definitively reduce its taxes this year. On Sunday, voters clearly approved the 2024 budget with the tax rate reduction of one twentieth of a unit to 1.65 units decided by the city parliament.
The proportion of votes in favor was 76.81 percent (12,465 to 3,763 votes). The turnout was 30.57 percent, as the city of Lucerne reported in a press release on Sunday. With this reduction in the tax rate, the budget envisages a revenue surplus of 6.5 million francs with expenditure of 843.4 million francs.
In its draft budget, the city council had originally proposed a tax rate reduction of one tenth from 1.7 to 1.6 units. This was partly because tax income from legal entities developed positively.
The conservative camp in the city parliament welcomed this tax cut, but it went too far for the left wing of the council. In the end, parliament agreed on a compromise and decided to reduce taxes by one twentieth of a unit from 1.7 to 1.65 units.
Two voting rights complaints were lodged against this decision by the city parliament, which the government ultimately rejected.
Because voters only now voted on the 2024 budget, the city was in a budget-less state. This has now ended with the approval of the voters. In a budgetless state, the city had to limit its spending to the essentials. The city was already in this state a year ago. At the beginning of February, the estimate with the tax rate reduction from 1.75 to 1.7 units was clearly approved at the ballot box.
The electorate also voted in favor of the partial revision of the municipal regulations by 13,494 votes to 2,657. Finance Director Franziska Bitzi Staub expressed her delight at the result and the fact that there is now a clear, unambiguous division of responsibilities again, as can be seen in the press release from the city of Lucerne.
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