Switzerland Flag Quotes

There are many good things about Switzerland. The flag is a big plus. Also – possibly in reaction to the excess of meetings at CERN, the United Nations or the World Trade Organization – a Swiss political party formed in 2011 with a policy to ban PowerPoint. Contingency plans, including holding all meetings over the French border in the Prévessin site of CERN or (clearly very popular) enforcing a strict LaTeX-only policy, were discussed extensively.

In Switzerland in October 2012, Muslims complained about a billboard campaign for Swiss International Air Lines, whose logo includes the cross from the Swiss flag, because the ads contained the words “‘the cross is trumps’”: “Muslims in Switzerland have responded negatively to the advertising, which they believe promotes Christianity over other religions.... ‘Many Muslims feel this Christian slogan [of Swiss International] is a provocation and an assault against Islam.’” The airline said that its ad campaign does not carry any religious or political message—that in fact the word “trumps” is a pun for a Swiss card game—and apologized for upsetting Muslims.237 Even in the

What’s the best part about living in Switzerland? No idea, but the flag is a big plus!

Chasing tax cheats using normal procedures was not an option. It would take decades just to identify anything like the majority of them and centuries to prosecute them successfully; the more we caught, the more clogged up the judicial system would become. We needed a different approach. Once Danis was on board a couple of days later, together we thought of one: we would extract historical and real-time data from the banks on all transfers taking place within Greece as well as in and out of the country and commission software to compare the money flows associated with each tax file number with the tax returns of that same file number. The algorithm would be designed to flag up any instance where declared income seemed to be substantially lower than actual income. Having identified the most likely offenders in this way, we would make them an offer they could not refuse. The plan was to convene a press conference at which I would make it clear that anyone caught by the new system would be subject to 45 per cent tax, large penalties on 100 per cent of their undeclared income and criminal prosecution. But as our government sought to establish a new relationship of trust between state and citizenry, there would be an opportunity to make amends anonymously and at minimum cost. I would announce that for the next fortnight a new portal would be open on the ministry’s website on which anyone could register any previously undeclared income for the period 2000–14. Only 15 per cent of this sum would be required in tax arrears, payable via web banking or debit card. In return for payment, the taxpayer would receive an electronic receipt guaranteeing immunity from prosecution for previous non-disclosure.17 Alongside this I resolved to propose a simple deal to the finance minister of Switzerland, where so many of Greece’s tax cheats kept their untaxed money.18 In a rare example of the raw power of the European Union being used as a force for good, Switzerland had recently been forced to disclose all banking information pertaining to EU citizens by 2017. Naturally, the Swiss feared that large EU-domiciled depositors who did not want their bank balances to be reported to their country’s tax authorities might shift their money before the revelation deadline to some other jurisdiction, such as the Cayman Islands, Singapore or Panama. My proposals were thus very much in the Swiss finance minister’s interests: a 15 per cent tax rate was a relatively small price to pay for legalizing a stash and allowing it to remain in safe, conveniently located Switzerland. I would pass a law through Greece’s parliament that would allow for the taxation of money in Swiss bank accounts at this exceptionally low rate, and in return the Swiss finance minister would require all his country’s banks to send their Greek customers a friendly letter informing them that, unless they produced the electronic receipt and immunity certificate provided by my ministry’s web page, their bank account would be closed within weeks. To my great surprise and delight, my Swiss counterpart agreed to the proposal.19