In no country on earth do the people think taxes are too low or too simple, or the burden imposed by the authorities to enforce them too light. Switzerland is no exception to this rule. “The taxes on capital and investment,” says Hans Bär, the former chairman of Julius Bär, a respected investment bank in Zürich, “are too high.” Edwin Somm, the former chairman of Asea-Brown-Boveri, the giant Swiss engineering firm, agrees. “There are a number of changes that must be made in the tax code to ensure competitiveness,” he argues—and then pulls out a series of charts that detail, Ross-Perot-like, what sectors suffer from the rates that are too high, and which ones have allowances too wide or too narrow. George, affable, six-foot-five porter at the front desk of the Bellevue Hotel in Bern, agrees. “The Swiss tax system is not that great,” George offers. He pauses. “What are you comparing it to?”