Many believe that AI automation will cause a lot of job loss. This is a societal question. However, the AI automation also has tax consequences.

Today, every employee is taxed on their salary. This is a huge inflow for the Swiss federal and cantonal administration. With this money, administrations finance their activities. 

However, if these employees were to be replaced by automation (more specifically AI automation, which we assume is much more sophisticated), the State would lose a big part of the tax inflows. To address this risk, should Switzerland introduce taxes on AI automation? This question aligns with the question of whether "Robots should be taxed".

The potential consequences would also push companies to consider twice before automating certain tasks since the financial advantages of automation will be lower than today (no more salary to pay vs. paying taxes instead) and might push companies to an "AI enhancing the human" rather than "AI replacing the human" approach. 

This could however negatively impact the incentives to innovate.