Zurich city council does not want a billboard tax
Homeowners would no longer be allowed to put up advertising posters for free; instead, they would have to pay an annual fee. The city council is not in favor of this idea.
As the Tages-Anzeiger reported in its Monday edition, left-wing parties and the IG Plakat Raum Gesellschaft are calling for this. In return, the city council should forego the income from the 2199 public billboards and give them to cultural institutions free of charge instead of renting them out to poster companies. The city council does not think much of these ideas. In the canton of Zurich, there is no legal basis for levying a billboard tax. This decision therefore does not lie with the city, but with the canton. Posters, in reasonable numbers and well adapted to the surroundings, would also enrich the public space. Because the city council does not want to forgo the approximately two million francs that Zurich earns from renting out its poster sites, it would like to continue the current practice.
However, this rejection is not the end of the discussion, the Tagi continues. All parties except the SP are calling on the city council to draft a billboard ordinance that the municipal council can help shape and adopt. A corresponding motion by the SVP and FDP had been passed in parliament. It is true that the conservatives are calling for exactly the opposite of the left, namely a more tolerant practice. "But we agree that parliament and not the city council alone should regulate billposting," says Matthias Probst from the Greens.
