Facts
The taxpayer operates a taxi business as a sole proprietor and has a taxi license B from the canton of Basel-Stadt. The Federal Tax Administration (FTA) had retroactively registered the taxpayer in the register of VAT taxpayers as of January 1, 2005, and had determined the owed tax at its discretion, after the taxpayer's accounting records had proven to be inadequate.
The Federal Administrative Court had upheld the taxpayer's appeal and overturned the FTA's ruling. The FTA filed an appeal with the Federal Court and requested the overturning of the Federal Administrative Court's judgment and the confirmation of the FTA's ruling.
Considerations
The Federal Court examined the jurisdiction and admissibility of the appeal and came to the conclusion that the appeal in public law matters is admissible to the Federal Court. The FTA is entitled to file the present appeal.
The Federal Court applied the law ex officio and examined the FTA's objections. It came to the conclusion that the lower court had wrongly concluded that the discretionary assessment was obviously incorrect. The FTA had determined the kilometer rate of CHF 2.15 based on empirical data from the years 2000 and 2001, which were based on a database of 38 persons with a taxi license A in the city of Basel.
The Federal Court found that the FTA had fulfilled its duty to investigate and that the estimation of the kilometer…