Selling Gift Vouchers (Gutscheine) in Switzerland: When MWST Applies

Pre-Christmas weeks are voucher season: a customer pays 50 francs at the till and walks out with a card promising 50 francs of your goods or services. Nothing has been supplied yet — and the ESTV treats that difference as decisive: Gutscheine are pure means of payment, their sale is not taxable, and MWST arises only on redemption.[2]

The voucher sale is not a supply

The ESTV's wording is blunt: Gutscheine are reine Zahlungsmittel — pure means of payment. Selling one performs no supply, so the amount taken is a Nicht-Entgelt, a non-consideration that is not taxable.[2]

That matches the statute: the tax is calculated on the consideration actually received,[1] and at the voucher counter no consideration for a supply has arrived — only cash against a promise.

The booking follows: on sale, cash is set against Gutscheine, a passive account — no revenue, no MWST owed.[2] The 50 francs are a debt you owe the holder until the card comes back.

The payoff is real: voucher sales never inflate taxable turnover.[2] Watch the CHF 100,000 registration threshold or plan with Saldosteuersatz figures — unredeemed cards must not appear as Umsatz in either.

Redemption is the tax event

The clock starts when the holder spends the card: at redemption, the Entgelt is taxed at the applicable rate — the value of the goods or services actually received, regardless of your Abrechnungsart.[2]

The rate follows the basket, not the voucher. A card spent on standard-rated goods carries the standard rate; spent on reduced-rated items, the reduced rate.[2] One voucher can feed several tax-rate lines in the same return, split by what the till recorded.

Booking runs in two steps: the redemption releases the Gutscheine liability — MWST-unwirksam — while the sale is booked as turnover with its tax.[2] The liability dissolves exactly as the taxable revenue arises.

Mixed payments stay ordinary: if the basket exceeds the card, the cash top-up is consideration too; if it costs less, the balance remains a liability until spent. A voucher delays the assessment of a sale — it never changes it.

Never show MWST on the voucher receipt

The disclosure rule is explicit: receipts, invoices or confirmations for voucher sales must not carry a tax disclosure, because the sale lies outside VAT.[2]

Art. 27 MWSTG gives that rule teeth: whoever details too high a tax — or tax where none is due — owes the tax shown, unless the invoice is corrected or the Confederation is shown to have suffered no loss.[1] A tax-printed voucher receipt converts the holder's 50 francs into unearned turnover.

Keep the voucher receipt factual: date, amount, voucher number, validity and redemption conditions. The formal invoice rules bite only once a real supply is invoiced — the ESTV anchors the disclosure ban in its Buchführung und Rechnungsstellung rules.[2][4]

The redemption receipt is a different animal: it documents an actual sale. Till receipts up to 400 francs need no recipient details — though they never entitle the holder to a tax refund in the refund procedure.[3]

Expiry, e-purses and books that survive an audit

The Nicht-Entgelt principle has a quiet corollary: a never-redeemed voucher never triggers a supply, so no MWST ever arises on it. Releasing an expired card's balance is a bookkeeping step, not a tax event — the amount was never turnover.

Electronic purses ride the same track: loading a card or key performs no supply, and the tax falls due only as the credit is spent — whether or not you are also the issuer.[2]

Discipline makes it auditable: issue vouchers with serial numbers, keep a ledger of sold, redeemed and outstanding balances, and reconcile the Gutscheine account against your till records. A MwSt-Kontrolle will happily walk exactly that path.

facturio keeps every sale dated and reconciled per period, so redemptions land in the right quarter at the right rate while unredeemed cards stay out of turnover. Sources: [1] Federal Act on Value Added Tax (MWSTG), fedlex; [2] ESTV MWST-Branchen-Info 06 Detailhandel; [3] Value Added Tax Ordinance (MWSTV), fedlex; [4] ESTV MWST-Info 16.