Facts

Parties and instances: The Compensation Office Basel-Landschaft (appellant) is in dispute with a widowed non-gainfully employed person born in 1963 (respondent) over the personal AHV/IV/EO contributions. The lower instance is the Cantonal Court of Basel-Landschaft (decision of 28 August 2019).

Facts: The Compensation Office retroactively registered the insured person as non-gainfully employed as of 1 January 2013 (letter of 21 September 2018) and levied personal contributions for 2013-2016 (decisions of 21 September 2018). For 2017, a contribution decision was issued on 11 October 2018, and interim contributions were invoiced for 2017 and 2018. The insured person lodged an objection. By decision on objection of 22 January 2019, the Compensation Office upheld the decisions for 2013-2016 and did not enter into the objection concerning the interim contributions for lack of definitive decisions.

Lower instance: With the consent of the Compensation Office, the Cantonal Court extended the proceedings to contribution year 2017 for reasons of procedural economy. For 2018 and 2019, there was no subject matter of challenge. The appeal was partially upheld and the matter was remitted to the Compensation Office for the years 2016 and 2017. The property located abroad was to be valued at the purchase price (apportionment value), to be divided by 2.6, from which the cantonal cadastral value follows (CHF 96'827.- for 2016; CHF 103'939.- for 2017). The appeal was otherwise dismissed.

Applications before the Federal Supreme Court: The Compensation Office requests that the lower court's decision be set aside and that its decision on objection as well as the contribution decisions of 21 September and 11 October 2018 be confirmed. The insured person requests recalculation of the contributions for 2016-2019, adopting the Italian cadastral value (valore catastale), and argues that she cannot pay the contributions assessed retroactively. The FSO waived a statement of position.

Legal question: The sole point in dispute is which value the Italian property must be assigned when determining the determinative assets for the non-gainfully employed contributions: the cantonal tax value or the market value (purchase price or apportionment value).

Considerations

Interlocutory decision and admissibility: The remittal decision is an interlocutory decision. It is nevertheless appealable, because it may cause the administration an irreparable disadvantage (Art. 93 para. 1 lit. a FSCA; BGE 133 V 477 consid. 5.2.4). The lower court binds the Compensation Office to the calculation basis, so the appeal is in principle admissible.

Subject matter of the challenge and scope of the proceedings: Extending the subject matter of the challenge to 2017 is not objectionable, since the administration took a position in the cantonal proceedings, the same legal questions apply as for 2016, and no one disputes the requirements (BGE 130 V 138 consid. 2.1; BGE 130 V 501 consid. 1.2). The decisions of 21 September 2018 have been replaced by the decision on objection and can no longer be confirmed (BGE 142 V 337 consid. 3.2.1), so the court does not enter into them to that extent. The contribution decision of 11 October 2018 (year 2017), by contrast, falls within the devolutive effect and is the subject of the proceedings (BGE 130 V 138 consid. 4.2). The insured person's requests for recalculation for 2018 and 2019, as well as an incidental appeal, go beyond the dismissal of the appeal and are inadmissible (Art. 107 para. 1 FSCA; BGE 145 V 57 consid. 10.2). New documents are disregarded because of the prohibition on novel evidence (Art. 99 para. 1 FSCA).

Scope of review: The Federal Supreme Court applies the law ex officio but only examines the legal defects raised (Art. 106 para. 1 and Art. 42 paras. 1-2 FSCA). It bases its decision on the facts established by the lower court (Art. 105 para. 1 FSCA). The question of which value is determinative for foreign properties is a free question of law (BGE 145 V 57 consid. 4).

Determinative value and apportionment value: Art. 29 para. 3 OASIO requires the cantonal tax authorities to report the determinative assets and to take into account the intercantonal apportionment values (cf. marginal no. 2104 WSN). Apportionment values serve to record properties uniformly despite differing cantonal valuations; they express the relationship between cantonal tax values and market value (BGE 120 Ia 349 consid. 4a; Circular 22 of the Tax Conference). For the calculation of contributions, it is not the lower, tax-policy-shaped cantonal tax value but a balanced market value that should apply, which better corresponds to economic ability to pay (BGE 143 V 254 consid. 6.1). This also applies to foreign properties, since otherwise there would be unequal treatment compared with contribution payers holding properties in Switzerland (judgment 9C_360/2019…