Deferred tax assets related to tax loss carry-forwards: 

On May 19, 2019, the Swiss electorate passed the Federal Act on Tax Reform and AHV Financing (TRAF). The tax reform abolishes the tax regimes for holding, domiciliary and mixed companies as of January 1, 2020 and introduces new tax measures. To the extent that the tax reform requires cantonal and communal tax law changes, these have to be implemented through modification of the cantonal tax law. On September 1, 2019, in a public vote, the electorate of the canton of Zurich accepted the respective revision of the cantonal tax law. The relevant changes to the Group include a decrease in the statutory income tax rate in the canton of Zurich, effective as from January 1, 2021. Therefore, the Group has revalued its Swiss deferred tax positions in 2019 which resulted in a non-recurring deferred tax benefit (CHF 0.3 million) and a positive non-recurring effect on both other comprehensive income (CHF 0.4 million) and equity (CHF 0.1 million).

As part of the TRAF and cantonal tax practice, transitional measures were introduced in order to ease the transition from the current reliefs to the new tax measures. For the Group, these measures allow amongst others the tax-effective amortization of a step-up amount over a period of up to 10 years. 

Expected tax benefits related to the step-up mechanism that were not capitalized at year-end:

At December 31, 2020, there were temporary differences of CHF 445.6 million (2019: CHF 377.2 million) related to investments in subsidiaries for which no deferred tax liabilities were recognized since the Group controls the timing of reversal of the temporary differences and it is probable that the temporary differences will not reverse in the foreseeable future. The corresponding unrecognized amount is not material.