NetAP prevails at federal administrative court

NetAP wins at the Federal Administrative Court – exemption from customs duties and VAT for deliveries of materials abroad now also for recognized animal welfare organizations. This decision by the Federal Administrative Court is relevant for all recognized charitable organizations in Switzerland that receive deliveries of materials from abroad.

What happened?

NetAP regularly receives donations of materials from abroad. Until now, these had to be cleared through customs. However, we were of the opinion that this put animal welfare organizations at a disadvantage compared to human welfare organizations. Our board member Bruno Mascello (a lawyer) wanted to clarify this issue and took this case through various stages to the Federal Administrative Court, where we have now prevailed.

The legal situation in Switzerland is as follows: Goods that are brought into Swiss customs territory are generally subject to customs duties (Art. 7 para. 1 Customs Act [ZG]) and are also subject to import tax (Art. 50 ff. Mehrwertsteuergesetz [MWSTG]). Certain goods are already duty-free by law (Art. 8 para. 1 ZG). Others can be declared duty-free by the Federal Council, in particular goods for charitable organizations, relief organizations or needy persons (Art. 8 para. 2 let. d ZG), which are then also exempt from VAT (Art. 53 para. 1 let. d MWSTG). The Federal Council has made use of this competence and declared that goods donated to recognized charitable organizations and relief organizations or needy persons are duty-free (Art. 17 Customs Ordinance [ZV]).

The Directorate General of Customs took the view that the customs exemption only applied to goods that were donated to people in need as final recipients, i.e. only those organizations could invoke the customs exemption. The keeping of pets is not a basic need and donations are explicitly made to people, not animals. Therefore, an animal welfare organization such as NetAP could not invoke the customs exemption.

However, in its ruling of March 29, 2018, the Federal Administrative Court decided that NetAP should be granted customs exemption for its deliveries of materials abroad. One of NetAP’s principles is that we want to raise the status of animals and not lower that of humans. This ruling brings us another small step closer to this goal.

The full text of the decision can be found here.