Art collections in Swiss freeports under Swiss customs, VAT and cultural-property law

Which storage regime

Swiss customs law offers two kinds of customs storage that matter for a collector, and "freeport" is the trade name of one of them. A duty-free warehouse (Zollfreilager) is part of the customs territory, or premises within it, under customs supervision and separated from the rest of the territory, in which goods that have not been cleared may be stored; the goods stored there are subject neither to import customs duties nor to trade-policy measures, and they may be stored for an unlimited time (Customs Act, Article 62(1) and (3) and Article 65(2)). The operator needs a licence, one condition of which is that the warehouse is in principle open to everyone on equal terms (Article 64(2)(c)), and it must keep a register of its tenants and depositors and an inventory of all sensitive goods stored, a duty the licence may shift to the depositor (Article 66; Customs Ordinance, Articles 182 and 183). Cultural property within the meaning of the Cultural Property Transfer Act is on the list of sensitive goods (Customs Ordinance, Annex 2, item 14), so a work of art that is cultural property is declared on storage with the depositor's name and address (Article 178a prescribes electronic declaration; the customs authority states that paper form 11.95 is used until electronic filing is available) and entered in an inventory that records, among other things, the name and address of the owner of the goods, the country of origin, a description, the identity marks and the value (Article 184(1)). An open customs warehouse (offenes Zolllager) is the second regime: a place approved by the customs authority in which the licensed operator stores uncleared goods, its own or others', with inventory records of everything stored (Customs Act, Articles 50 to 57). The legal difference for a collector is small; the practical difference is who runs the place and on what terms. In both, the goods remain uncleared, the operator answers to the customs authority for their presence, and the owner's rights are what the contract and Swiss property law make them.

Two things the warehouse is not. It is not outside Switzerland: the Act calls duty-free warehouses parts of the customs territory, and the VAT Act treats them as Swiss territory. And its legal basis is changing: Parliament adopted a total revision of the customs legislation on 20 June 2025 and no referendum was called, but the new acts enter into force only with their ordinances, on which the Federal Council opened a consultation on 14 October 2026 running to 28 January 2027; the Customs Act and Ordinance cited here apply at the date of this update, and the review date of this piece is the entry into force of the new acts.

Customs and tax: deferred, not exempt

In customs law "import" means the release of goods into free circulation (Customs Act, Article 6(g)). The customs debt arises when the customs office accepts the declaration for that release, or when goods are removed from a duty-free warehouse without a declaration (Article 69(a) and (d)), and the debtors include the person who brings the goods in, the declarant and the person on whose account they are imported (Article 70(2)). Import VAT follows the same track: the VAT Act taxes the import of objects (Article 52(1)(a)), applies the customs legislation to the import tax (Article 50), and makes the import-tax debt arise at the same time as the customs debt (Article 56(1)). While the work sits in the warehouse, therefore, neither duty nor import VAT is due; on release, any customs duty under the tariff and import VAT at 8.1 per cent (Article 55(1)) fall due, the tax being computed on the consideration where the work is imported in performance of a sale, and otherwise on its market value, in each case including the transport costs to the destination in Switzerland (Article 54(1)(a) and (g) and (3)). The Act exempts the import of works of art created personally by painters or sculptors and brought in by them or on their behalf (Article 53(1)(c)); the customs authority states that the exemption needs all three conditions together, and on the statutory words it does not reach a collector importing a work bought from a gallery, because the work is not brought in by the artist or on the artist's behalf.

A sale while the work is stored is a Swiss supply, because the warehouse is Swiss territory for VAT (Article 3(a)) and the place of supply of goods is where the goods are (Article 7(1)(a)); it is taxable in principle if the seller is a taxable person, and exempt where the goods are demonstrably under customs supervision because of storage in a duty-free warehouse and have not lost that status retroactively (Article 23(2)(3bis)); for an open customs warehouse the exemption is Article 23(2)(3), which requires that the goods were under customs supervision in the warehousing procedure and that the procedure was closed properly or with the customs authority's subsequent authorisation. None of this says anything about the owner's income, wealth or estate tax at home. Where a work is stored does not settle where or how its owner is taxed: Swiss customs storage neither determines nor removes tax obligations in other jurisdictions, and the location and movement of a work can themselves matter to those taxes, which are for the owner's tax advisers.

Cultural property: the storage is the import

The Cultural Property Transfer Act uses "import" in its own sense, and the customs warehouse does not postpone it. Cultural property under the Act is property that is significant, for religious or secular reasons, for archaeology, prehistory, history, literature, art or science and that belongs to one of the categories of Article 1 of the 1970 UNESCO Convention (Article 2(1)); the categories include pictures, paintings and drawings produced entirely by hand, original sculpture and original prints, and antiques more than one hundred years old. The test is cumulative, the Federal Office of Culture's guidance puts the assessment on the declarant object by object, and a contemporary painting is not outside the definition by reason of its date alone. The storage of cultural property in customs warehouses counts as an import within the meaning of the Act (Article 19(3)), and the Ordinance requires the person responsible for the declaration to notify the customs office in writing of storage in an open customs warehouse, a bulk-goods warehouse or a duty-free warehouse, with the particulars prescribed for any import (Article 26); the customs authority states that the notification is made on its form 11.95. Since 1 January 2026 those particulars are the object type, the place of manufacture or find, the dating and the dimensions of the object, the statement that it is cultural property and whether a licence applies, per item for collective shipments, and incomplete declarations are rejected (Article 25, as amended by the Ordinance of 15 October 2025, AS 2025 634, which contains no transitional period). Making no statement, or a false one, about cultural property in a customs declaration on import, transit or export is an offence punishable with imprisonment of up to one year or a fine, and negligence with a fine of up to CHF 20,000 (Act, Article 24(1)(cbis) and (2)).

The due-diligence duties of the Act fall on the trade, not on the collector. Persons in the art trade and auction business may transfer cultural property only if they may assume in the circumstances that it was not stolen, lost against the owner's will or unlawfully excavated, and not unlawfully imported; they must establish the identity of the supplier or seller and obtain a written declaration of the right to dispose, inform customers of the import and export rules of contracting states, keep records of origin, counterparty, description and price, and retain records and vouchers for 30 years (Article 16); the duties fall away below a purchase price or estimate of CHF 5,000 except for the results of archaeological or palaeontological excavations or discoveries, fragments of historical monuments and finds from excavation sites, and ethnological cultural property, in particular objects used in sacred or profane rites (Ordinance, Article 16(2) and (3), as revised from 1 January 2026). The 2026 revision of the Ordinance tightened what the trade must obtain: identity verified against probative documents, a signed declaration naming the owner, written information to the customer on the import and export rules which the customer signs, and meaningful photographs (Articles 17 to 19). A foreign dealer is "in the art trade" for these purposes after more than ten transactions in cultural property with turnover above CHF 100,000 in a calendar year (Ordinance, Article 1(e)). A collector who sells a stored work to a dealer therefore signs the dealer's declaration as the named owner (Ordinance, Article 18), and the work, not the collector, is photographed for the dealer's file (Article 19(1)(abis)); a collector who holds and does nothing has no Article 16 duty. What the collector keeps is the exposure under Article 24 for the declaration and under Article 20, which requires the prosecution authorities to seize cultural property suspected of having been stolen, lost against the owner's will or unlawfully imported, and the possibility of a return claim by the state of export where the import breached a bilateral agreement or a Federal Council emergency measure, which lapses one year after the state learns where and with whom the object is and at the latest 30 years after the unlawful export (Articles 2(5), 7, 8 and 9). Customs storage settles none of these questions; the inventory records the owner's name, it does not establish title, and the customs authority states that it assumes no liability for stored goods. An amendment in force since 1 March 2026 added to the Act a commission for historically burdened cultural heritage, which, on application and with the parties' consent, gives non-binding recommendations in individual cases on cultural property whose origin or ownership raises questions because of transfers in the context of National Socialism or colonialism (Article 2(2bis) and Article 18a); for a work with a gap in its provenance in those years, the commission is now part of the Swiss picture.

What the storage contract should resolve

Swiss law supplies a deposit contract under which the keeper undertakes to take over a movable entrusted to it and to keep it in a safe place (Code of Obligations, Article 472), a duty of care for a warehouse keeper like that of a commission agent (Article 483), a retention right over the goods for the keeper's charges for as long as it has possession or can dispose of the goods through a warehouse receipt (Article 485(3)), and, where the keeper is authorised to issue them, warehouse receipts that are securities for the delivery of the goods (Article 482). The rest is negotiated, and should be. The contracting party should be the owner, or a vehicle whose ownership is documented, so that the customs inventory, the contract and the title file say the same thing. The contract should say who may give release instructions and in what form, and should require the keeper to act on no other; it should fix the declared value, because keepers' standard terms commonly cap liability at it, and the insurance, whose and for what; it should give the owner and any lender access for inspection and condition reports; and it should address what happens on the keeper's insolvency. In a Swiss bankruptcy the administration decides on the release of things claimed by a third party and, where it considers the claim unfounded, sets a period of 20 days to sue at the bankruptcy forum, failing which the claim is forfeited (Debt Enforcement and Bankruptcy Act, Article 242); the owner's evidence is the contract, the inventory and the chain of documents behind them. Those are the negotiated protections; the retention right and the bankruptcy procedure are the mandatory frame, and the keeper's standard terms should be reviewed under Swiss law before signature.

What changes on a sale or a financing

A sale while the work is stored engages three bodies of rules. The contract of sale is governed by the law the parties choose (Private International Law Act, Article 116) and, absent a choice, by the law of the seller's establishment, or of the place of a Swiss auction, under the Hague Convention of 15 June 1955 (Article 118); where seller and buyer have their places of business in different Contracting States, a commercial sale is under the Vienna Sales Convention unless the contract excludes it, and that Convention passes risk when the buyer takes over the goods, not on contract (Articles 1, 2, 6 and 69). The transfer of ownership is governed by Swiss law as the law of the place where the work is (Article 100 of the Private International Law Act), under which ownership of a movable passes by the transfer of possession (Civil Code, Article 714(1)), here, where the keeper remains in possession, by the seller's notice to the keeper that the buyer is now the person it holds for (Article 924); and, where Swiss domestic law governs the sale, benefit and risk pass on conclusion of the contract unless special circumstances or an agreement provide otherwise (Code of Obligations, Article 185(1)), which the contract should displace to the moment of payment. The customs inventory records the owner's name and address (Customs Ordinance, Article 184(1)(c)), and the customs authority's regulation requires the current owner's full address and an adjustment on a change of owner; the VAT consequence is as above; and if the buyer or the seller is in the trade, the Article 16 duties and the 2026 declaration apply to the transfer. Nothing moves, and nothing needs to be declared under the Cultural Property Transfer Act, because the work neither enters nor leaves.

A financing is where the warehouse decides the lender's position. Under Swiss law a movable may be pledged, where the law makes no exception, only by transferring possession of it to the pledgee, and the pledge is not constituted while the pledgor retains exclusive control (Civil Code, Article 884(1) and (3)); a transfer of ownership that leaves the thing with the transferor is ineffective against third parties where it is intended to disadvantage them or to circumvent the pledge rules (Article 717). A lender in New York may document the loan under New York law and file a financing statement where the borrower is located, and for the work in Geneva that filing transfers no possession. What gives the lender security that holds in Switzerland is the keeper's holding the work for the lender under a three-party arrangement, settled with Swiss counsel, under which release follows the lender's instruction; the keeper will assert its retention right for its charges (Code of Obligations, Article 485(3)) against the lender, so its ranking and any waiver belong in the three-party agreement; and the inventory shows the owner, not the pledgee, so the lender's documentation is the evidence of its right. The New York analysis, from attachment through the four-month rule on a move to the enforcement rules that can be waived only after default, is in our update on art-backed lending; the Swiss side is as set out here.

What happens when the work leaves

Four exits, four procedures. Release into Switzerland, to hang in a house in Zurich, is an import in the customs sense: the declaration is accepted, the customs debt and the import VAT arise (Customs Act, Article 69; VAT Act, Article 56(1)), and the cultural-property declaration is made with the full particulars. An exhibition loan within Switzerland can instead use temporary admission, under which import duties are assessed with a conditional payment obligation, the identity of the goods is secured and the period and purpose are fixed (Customs Act, Article 9 and Article 58); the customs authority's guidance treats exhibitions and sale on approval as recognised purposes and requires a new declaration where the purpose, the user or the owner changes, and a work lent from a contracting state to a Swiss museum may be covered by a return guarantee under which private persons and authorities cannot assert claims to the object while it is in Switzerland (Act, Articles 10 to 13); whether a work already stored in Switzerland can be brought within that guarantee is a question for the Federal Office of Culture, not an assumption. Re-export to London or Paris, or shipment to New York, is a transit out of the customs territory with an export declaration carrying the cultural-property particulars (Ordinance, Article 25); no federal export licence is needed unless the object is in the Federal register, which holds property of the Confederation and from which only temporary export is possible (Act, Articles 3 and 5); cantonal registers can carry a cantonal licence requirement (Act, Article 4; Ordinance, Article 24(2)), and the customs authority states that cantonal restrictions do not in general reach foreign cultural property. Goods that have been assessed for export and are then parked in a duty-free warehouse must leave the customs territory within six months of the acceptance of the export declaration, extendable on application at most three times by six months each, with a further extension only in the hardship cases listed in Article 157(4) (Customs Ordinance, Article 157, applied to duty-free warehouses by Article 179); a collector who exports a work on paper and keeps it in Geneva is on that clock.

On arrival the destination's law takes over, and the buyer's nationality does not choose it; the route and the procedure do. For New York, original paintings, drawings and pastels executed entirely by hand enter under heading 9701 of the Harmonized Tariff Schedule at a general rate of free. The Section 301 action in force since 24 July 2026 adds duties to goods of sixty economies, Switzerland among them at 12.5 per cent net of the most-favoured-nation rate, subject to exclusions; on the schedule as it stood at the date of this update, heading 9903.05.92 keeps "artworks" within the informational-materials exclusion at the ordinary rate, and CBP's published list of 23 July 2026 (CSMS 69326983) places the Chapter 97 subheadings, 9701.21.00 to 9706.90.00, under the exclusion heading 9903.05.86 (both read on 19 October 2026). The additional duty, where any applies, turns on the work's origin, not on the country it was stored in. The position is to be confirmed by a licensed customs broker against the current schedule before shipment, together with the formal-entry requirement above USD 2,500 (19 CFR 143.21(a)), the cultural-property import restrictions of 19 CFR 12.104 and following for designated archaeological and ethnological material, and the state use-tax question, which is for a US tax adviser. A shipment to London or into the European Union raises the destination's own cultural-goods import rules, which are outside this update.

What this means for you

• "Import" has two meanings, and the cultural-property one bites at the warehouse door. Customs and VAT are deferred until release (Customs Act, Articles 6(g), 62(3) and 69; VAT Act, Article 56); the storage of cultural property in a customs warehouse is already an import under the Cultural Property Transfer Act and must be notified with the particulars that have applied since 1 January 2026 (Act, Article 19(3); Ordinance, Articles 25 and 26). A missing or false declaration is an offence (Act, Article 24).
• The warehouse is Swiss territory, not an exemption. No import duty or VAT while stored; import VAT at 8.1 per cent on release; a sale while stored is a Swiss supply; for a taxable seller it is exempt under Article 23(2)(3bis) of the VAT Act where the goods are demonstrably under customs supervision in the warehouse. Nothing in the warehouse settles the owner's tax position elsewhere.
• The 2026 revision changed what a dealer must obtain from a selling collector. Identity verified against documents, a signed declaration naming the owner, written import and export information the customer signs, photographs, and dating and dimensions in every customs declaration, with no grace period (Ordinance, Articles 17 to 19 and 25, in force 1 January 2026). The CHF 5,000 threshold and the 30-year retention are unchanged.
• Storage settles neither title nor provenance. The inventory records the owner's name and address (Customs Ordinance, Article 184); it establishes nothing. The state's return claim (Act, Article 9), seizure on suspicion (Article 20) and, since 1 March 2026, the commission for historically burdened cultural heritage (Article 18a) operate regardless of customs status.
• Write the storage contract as if the keeper will fail. The keeper's retention right and the bankruptcy segregation procedure are the mandatory frame (Code of Obligations, Article 485(3); SchKG, Article 242); the contracting party, release instructions, declared value, insurance, access and the lender's control are negotiated and should be settled with Swiss counsel against the keeper's standard terms.
• A lender's security in Switzerland is possession. A pledge of a movable needs transfer of possession and is not constituted while the owner keeps exclusive control (Civil Code, Article 884); rights in rem follow the work (Private International Law Act, Article 100). The New York filing is for the New York side; the keeper's holding for the lender is the Swiss side.
• Exits are dated procedures. Release, temporary admission, re-export and the six-month period for export-assessed goods each have their own rules (Customs Act, Articles 9, 58 and 69; Customs Ordinance, Articles 157 and 179); the US entry turns on the work's origin and the tariff schedule on the day, to be confirmed with a broker. The customs acts adopted in June 2025 are not yet in force; this update is to be reviewed when they are.

Isak Legal advises collectors, family offices, lenders and art-market businesses on the storage, sale, financing and movement of works held in Switzerland, on the cultural-property and customs declarations each step requires and on the contracts that carry them, under Swiss law with a registered Swiss lawyer where Swiss law requires one, and with customs and tax specialists for the questions that depend on them. See our Art Law and Switzerland pages, or get in touch.

This client update is provided for general information only, reflects the position as at 20 October 2026 and does not constitute legal advice or create a lawyer-client relationship. The statutory position is taken from the Customs Act (SR 631.0), the Customs Ordinance (SR 631.01), the VAT Act (SR 641.20), the Cultural Property Transfer Act (SR 444.1) and Ordinance (SR 444.11), the Civil Code (SR 210), the Code of Obligations (SR 220), the Private International Law Act (SR 291) and the Debt Enforcement and Bankruptcy Act (SR 281.1) as published on Fedlex in their German texts; the English translations have no legal force. The customs authority's and the Federal Office of Culture's pages, forms and regulations (R-10-30, R-10-50, R-60-2.7) and CBP's lists are guidance and rank below the instruments; the US tariff position is taken from the Harmonized Tariff Schedule and the Federal Register as at the date of this update. Verify the current texts at the official sources linked above before acting. For advice on a specific matter, please contact us.