Head to Swiss canton of Nidwalden for world’s lowest corporate tax rate of 9.8%

Bern: Hong Kong will soon lose its status as the place with the world’s lowest corporate tax, replaced by the small mountainous canton of Nidwalden in Switzerland, a study found.

That’s according to a taxation index by BAK Economics that regularly measures the attractiveness of Swiss cantons compared with each other as well as locations abroad.

Switzerland is implementing one of the most significant tax reforms in decades. Tax burdens on corporate profits are expected to fall sharply in several cantons, especially Nidwalden, located on Lake Lucerne, according to the study.

Unless Hong Kong changes its own tax regime, Nidwalden will push past it by 2025 with a corporate rate of 9.8 per cent, the independent Swiss economic research institute concluded.

Nationally, the Swiss corporate tax rate should fall to 13.5 per cent from 16.8 per cent when the reforms are fully in place by 2025, BAK estimated. That would be lower than Singapore. The canton of the capital Bern, with the highest tax burden in Switzerland, comes in ahead of European cities such as London, Munich, Vienna, Paris and Milan.