Wohlen’s former tax-hike opponents now seek higher taxes

Wohlen’s municipal council is proposing an increase in the tax rate from 116 to 122 per cent, despite the Swiss People’s Party having campaigned against higher taxes in the Aargau municipality. The proposal was reported by SRF.

The council says budget cuts are not enough to address the municipality’s finances. A proposed land sale was intended to delay the tax increase by a year, but Wohlen’s residents’ council, its parliament, rejected it.

The tax proposal follows years of disagreement over the municipality’s budget. In each of the past three years, the council sought to raise taxes by several percentage points, but the residents’ council blocked the plans. In 2019, after residents rejected the budget twice, the Aargau cantonal government set the budget and raised the tax rate.

Wohlen has had a new, all-centre-right municipal council since this year, with two SVP members and one member each from the FDP, Centre and Green Liberal Party. SVP member Roland Vogt replaced Social Democrat Arsène Perroud as mayor, and fellow SVP member Claudia Hauri took responsibility for finance.

Wohlen has about 18,000 residents and provides schools and sports facilities for the wider region. Its social assistance rate is well above the Aargau average, while committed spending on social assistance, care, education and special-needs schools has risen. The municipality also has comparatively low taxable incomes.

Social Democrat group leader Matthias Schneider said the SVP had made many promises during the election campaign, including that it would not touch the tax rate. Former finance councillor Denise Strasser, of the FDP, said she was not satisfied to see the increase proposed, but would have been surprised if the new council had found a solution that previous officials had missed.

Vogt called the proposal unfortunate, saying the municipality needed higher tax revenues but had hoped to avoid an increase next year. Hauri, who opposed tax increases as an SVP member of the residents’ council, said she had known about Wohlen’s debt and cost problems but had not anticipated the rise in committed spending. She said costs were increasing everywhere and that no municipality could have known this would happen.

Vogt said higher taxes would not attract the high-income taxpayers the municipality wanted. He plans to cut investment, with construction limited to projects Wohlen can fund without taking on debt.