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not harmonised for direct federal tax or for canton and community tax. Thus
retention periods of five years after expiry of the taxation period apply. In
case of a suspension or interruption of limitation due to objections, appeal
proceedings etc., the period can be extended up to 15 years.
Besides commercial and fiscal retention periods other legal requirements
founded on other laws, such as insurance law, occupational and social law,
as well as environmental protection law may apply.
When using Cloud services, it must be ensured that no data modification
and no data loss can occur during the retention period (e.g. because of a
provider discontinuing the service) and that the data is available at all times
and within a reasonable period for reading and automated processing. The
provider must thus be absolutely trustworthy and the corresponding
contractual assurances must be reliable.
The tax payer must bear the cost for making the data readable; the
conditions for this must be precisely clarified with the Cloud service provider
and the responsibilities demarcated.
Where operational processes are outsourced, the business owner must
consider the fact that they are still obliged to comply with requirements for
correctness, the business owner still bears responsibility. The business
owner should have the service provider assure the appropriateness and
effectiveness of the service‐related internal control system, and
demonstrate the same by means of corresponding audits. This means that
the outsourcing company can assume reasonable and effective processes on
the provider's side and cite these assurances in the case of an external audit.
If the company is subject to mandatory auditing, the final auditor will
probably look into questions of orderly accounting, risk management and
the internal control system in the context of the Cloud solution.
Processing and retaining data relevant for invoicing, by means of Cloud
computing, needs to be well prepared to avoid unpleasant surprises.
Tax deductibility of costs for Cloud computing
Tax‐relevant operating expenses due to business reasons. A tax‐payer who
secures the services of a Cloud service provider entirely and unequivocally
for business reasons, will be able to set the costs off against profit.
However, these expenses are not to be taken into account if the business
owner fails to comply with a request from the tax office to name the
