Youth wing proposes a wage-voucher to boost shopping in Ticino

Ticino has the lowest wages in Switzerland, and purchasing power keeps shrinking. Health insurance premiums and rents are weighing ever more heavily on household budgets. Many people decide where to shop based on price, often across the border in Italy, or online. When demand falls, local businesses suffer too.

To counter this trend, the Giovani del Centro, the youth wing of the Centre party, have put forward a general parliamentary initiative. The proposal envisions a cantonal system that would let employees voluntarily give up part of their salary, up to 5%, in exchange for a wage-voucher. The voucher could only be spent at businesses that are tax residents in Ticino.

A tax break for those who take part

Anyone joining the system would receive a tax bonus equal to 25% of the wage-voucher's value. "Penso che sia molto positivo poter pagare leggermente meno imposte" (roughly: "I think it's very positive to be able to pay slightly less tax"), says Giovanna Pedroni, president of the Giovani del Centro.

The tax break, however, means lower revenue for the state. The initiative's backers argue the shortfall would even out over time: "Se si spendesse di più nelle piccole e medie imprese locali, sarebbe possibile avere da loro un gettito maggiore" (roughly: "If more were spent at small and medium local businesses, it would be possible to gain more tax revenue from them"), says Pedroni. That calculation still needs to be tested, since the extra revenue depends on how much consumers actually shift their spending toward Ticino businesses.

Several points remain unclear. It has not yet been defined which businesses could join the scheme, nor whether their supply would match the demand created by the wage-voucher. "La descrizione esatta del tipo di aziende e dell'ambiente in cui operano andrà dettagliata in futuro, quando la proposta sarà analizzata più a fondo" (roughly: "The exact description of the type of businesses and the setting in which they operate will be detailed in the future, once the proposal is examined more closely"), says vice-president Luca Taglialatela. For participating businesses, he adds, the scheme could also serve as advertising, much like the stickers outside shops today that show customers which payment methods are accepted.

Since it remains a general initiative, the proposal will now go before Parliament, which must decide whether the idea is sound and whether it complies with the law, including the principle of economic freedom. A further question concerns public finances: how much will the tax break cost the state, and how long will it take for the extra revenue from local small and medium businesses to offset it?