A Court, Not Parliament, Forced This Redesign
On November 27, 2024, Switzerland's Federal Supreme Court ruled that the tariff structure of the country's business levy for radio and television — a mandatory fee charged to VAT-registered companies to help fund the public broadcaster SRG — was unconstitutional. The court found that its degressive rate table violated the principle of equal treatment under Article 127 of the Federal Constitution: because the tariff flattened out as revenue rose, small and mid-sized firms carried a relatively heavier burden than large ones. For reasons of legal certainty, the court let existing tariffs stand until the ordinance itself was amended.
That amendment is now underway. On June 23, 2026, the Federal Council opened a consultation on a partial revision of the Radio and Television Ordinance (RTVV), running through October 27, 2026, that replaces the 18-bracket degressive tariff with a 60-bracket progressive one and raises the revenue threshold for exemption from CHF 500,000 to CHF 1.2 million, effective January 1, 2027. The new brackets and rates take legal effect January 1, 2028.
What Actually Moves
The mechanics matter more than the "unconstitutional to constitutional" framing suggests. Tripling the exemption threshold cuts the number of liable companies from roughly one-third of VAT-registered Swiss businesses to about one-fifth — removing tens of thousands of small firms from the levy rolls entirely. Within the remaining pool, the finer 60-step gradient smooths what had been a blunt 18-step table, so smaller and mid-sized liable firms pay less than they do today. The offset lands narrowly: companies with annual revenue above roughly CHF 111 million will pay more than under the current schedule. The Federal Council designed the reform to be revenue-neutral for SRG funding — total collections hold at approximately CHF 180 million a year, about 13% of total broadcast-levy income (the remainder comes from the household fee).
The Case the Old Structure's Defenders Would Make
It's worth taking seriously why a degressive-but-capped structure existed in the first place. A flat or capped fee at the top end is administratively simple, predictable for large multinationals with Swiss subsidiaries, and avoids turning a media-funding mechanism into a corporate tax that scales indefinitely with size. Regulators also had a legitimate interest in keeping SRG's funding base broad and stable — a levy that swings sharply with a handful of large payers' revenue is more exposed to volatility than one spread evenly across many firms. Seen that way, the 2024 ruling didn't just correct a technical flaw; it forced Bern to accept a structurally different, and for big payers less predictable, funding instrument.
That said, the equal-treatment objection was sound. A tariff where a company earning CHF 600,000 pays a materially higher share of revenue than one earning CHF 400 million is difficult to defend under any constitutional equal-treatment standard, degressive design or not. The Federal Supreme Court's ruling reflects a narrow, defensible reading of Article 127 rather than judicial overreach into fiscal policy — it told the executive to fix a proportionality problem, not to raise more money or expand the levy's scope.
Where This Reform Gets Proportionality Right
The Federal Council's response deserves credit on the metric that matters most for a small-business-heavy economy like Switzerland's: it shrinks the regulated population rather than just re-slicing the existing one. Tripling the exemption threshold to CHF 1.2 million removes real compliance burden — filing, categorization, payment obligations — from tens of thousands of small firms previously liable for a fee that, at the bottom bracket, is a rounding error next to the administrative cost of tracking it. That is proportionate regulation working as it should: match obligation to actual capacity, and don't spend more in compliance overhead than the levy raises.
"Künftig sollen Unternehmen mit hohem Umsatz einen verhältnismässig höheren Betrag entrichten als kleinere Unternehmen" — companies with higher revenue should pay proportionally more than smaller enterprises, per the Federal Council's own framing of the reform.
Holding total revenue flat at CHF 180 million, rather than treating the court ruling as an opening to expand SRG's corporate funding, is likewise the right instinct. The reform fixes a constitutional defect without becoming a backdoor tax increase.
The One Number Worth Watching
The CHF 111 million threshold is where this policy touches the tech and telecom sector directly. Large platform and connectivity companies with Swiss establishments — exactly the firms this publication tracks across jurisdictions — sit disproportionately above that line, and the RTVV amendment gives them no formal seat in the design of the new bracket curve beyond the consultation process now open through October 27. A progressive structure that specifically targets the largest payers is defensible once, as a one-time correction to an unconstitutional table. It becomes a different policy instrument if Bern later uses the same 60-bracket architecture to ratchet rates upward on high-revenue firms in future ordinance cycles, treating "revenue neutrality" as a one-time promise rather than a standing constraint. Companies affected by the new brackets — and lawmakers who value predictable business taxation — should use the open consultation window to press for that constraint to be made explicit before the brackets take legal effect in 2028.