Implementing the VAT adjustment

Recommended procedure

Create new tax codes for the new tax rates for turnover tax as well as for input tax.

Sage highly recommends this procedure for the tax amendment. It takes account of the traceability (which tax rate has been applied) and the correct VAT application on the VAT return invoice.

If all tax rates are used in your company, you can create a maximum of:

Three new tax codes for turnover tax: standard rate, special rate for accommodation, reduced rate
Five new tax codes for input tax standard rate material/services, standard rate investments/operating expenditures, accommodation, reduced rate material/services, reduced rate investments/operating expenditures

Further required setting modifications are described in the following chapters.

Alternative procedure

Create new tax rate lines with the new percentage values with a validity date as of 01/01/2018 for the current tax codes for standard rate, accommodation and reduced rate. For invoices with an invoice date in 2018 and for entries with an entry date in 2018, the new tax rates will be applied.

For this procedure, the following restrictions should be taken into account. Therefore, we do not recommend this procedure.

This only applies when transactions with old and new tax rates can strictly be differentiated. Business transactions on which new tax rates in 2017 or old tax rates in 2018 should be applied, cannot be represented by this procedure.

For the payment of invoices from 2017 (with the old tax rate) including a discount in 2018, the payment date is in 2018, so the Discount VAT recalculation uses the new tax rate and not the original (old) tax rate.

Enhancements

The following changes apply to implementing the VAT adjustments. Unless otherwise indicated, they are available for all supported versions.

Tax declaration adjustment

The Swiss tax declaration (following effective allocation) makes it possible to print the tax values on a form used for verification purposes or on the form provided by the tax administration. Both print options have been adjusted to the new forms to be used from Q4 2017 on.

At the time of implementation, only form templates including a "Muster" watermark were available. Therefore, the tax declaration verification form also contains this watermark. This is not a functional restriction. The verification form can only be used for control purposes and not for direct submission to the tax administration.
Preprinted forms are not concerned.

When entering the Swiss tax declaration, you can enter a "free" period and print a single month for reconciliation purposes. Due to the mid-year change of the tax forms, a control will be applied to check if the entered period overlaps with the validity date of the old and new tax forms. In this case, an error message will be displayed.

The entry of the period 01/09/2017 to 10/31/2017 would be rejected because the new VAT form will be used from 10/01/2017 on.

Adjustment of the VAT declaration parameter

The VAT declaration parameter function (DCLVATSWI2) is used assigning tax codes to the report lines in the VAT accounting form. This function has been enhanced with the addition of a validity period.

The validity period controls that the values of a tax code will be displayed in different report lines according to the accounting period. This is particularly relevant when a tax code contains several tax rates with different validity dates.