Facts
The respondent is affiliated as a self-employed taxi driver with the Compensation Fund of the Canton of Zurich. On 21 February 2018 the Tax Administration of the Canton of Zurich reported to the Compensation Fund an income from self-employment of CHF 50'503.- for the year 2015. Based on this, the Compensation Fund set the insured person's personal contributions for 2015 at a total of CHF 5853.60 (supplementary decision of 23 February 2018). It dismissed the objection with decision of 1 June 2018.
The Social Insurance Court of the Canton of Zurich upheld the insured person's appeal, set aside the objection decision and remitted the matter to the Compensation Fund so that it would issue a new ruling on the income after conducting an investigation (decision of 28 June 2019). The cantonal court assumed that the insured person had in fact filled out his tax return incorrectly, which is why the tax information could not be relied upon.
The Compensation Fund files an appeal in public law matters with the Federal Supreme Court and requests that the decision of the lower court be set aside and its decision of 23 February 2018 be confirmed. The insured person and the Federal Social Insurance Office did not submit observations.
The issue is whether the cantonal court violated federal law by obliging the Compensation Fund to determine the insured person's income itself, independently of the information provided by the cantonal tax authorities.
Considerations
The Federal Supreme Court accepts the admissibility of the appeal against the remittal decision as an interlocutory decision within the meaning of Art. 93 para. 1 lit. a FSCA. A remittal decision against an insurance carrier causes an irreparable disadvantage if it contains substantive legal directives that the insurance carrier must follow. Here, the decision forces the Compensation Fund to set the contributions itself without being bound by the tax report, which is of a substantive legal nature.
The subject matter of the proceedings before the lower court is the objection decision of 1 June 2018, which replaced the decision of 23 February 2018 and corresponds to it in content. The request to confirm the decision is accepted in good faith as a request to confirm the objection decision.
Pursuant to Art. 23 para. 4 OASIO, the information of the cantonal tax authorities based on a final assessment is in principle binding on the compensation funds. A deviation may only be made if clearly demonstrated errors exist that can readily be corrected, or if circumstances that are irrelevant under tax law but significant under social insurance law must be considered. Mere doubts about the correctness of the tax assessment are not sufficient. The self-employed insured person must primarily safeguard his rights in the tax appeal procedure. Even if the assessment would probably have been corrected in an appeal procedure, the social insurance judge may not deviate from the final tax assessment, since he would otherwise become a tax judge and the statutory delimitation of competences would be violated.
Although the cantonal court had recognised that the insured person should in principle have asserted the correction in the tax appeal procedure, it saw no mere doubts due to the incorrect tax return. The Federal Supreme Court counters that the tax report is formally correct and that the cantonal tax office expressly…