Say, You work in a company and you travel from time to time inside Switzerland for work.

You have a GA.

The company rules says that: either they will reimburse the actual cost of your travel for work reasons, or, if you buy a GA, then you get reimbursed partially the yearly GA price (up to a percentage determined by the number of travels you made in the year).

But, you do not pay for your GA. Your spouse work in the public transportation sector and according to their rules, spouse gets a free GA.

In this case, are you still entitled the partial GA reimbursement from your own company?

Morally I would say no. The idea is that you are reimbersed for your expenses, and if you do not pay, then you do not need help to pay.
But, as many British MPs anf MEPs what is morally right and what you can squeeze out of those that pay you are different. Do you want to build a duck house?

My company requires me to show a bill for the purchase of either GA or HalbTax. Problem solved.

You haven't bought a GA have you? So make a claim for the actual price of the journeys.

You may have to look for new career opportunities at the point that they will ask you for the receipt.

I disagree. You cannot compare a GA to a duck house.

If your spouse is given a free GA, that GA is not really free, but it's part of his / her compensation package. It is thus not without value. It is earned. It is a form of pay that is just not money. This does not make it worthless.

There is no difference here to using your spouse's company car. Would you say, you cannot claim for costs on that as you didn't pay for it?

You shouldn't get money back for something you didn't buy.

If you use the car of your spouse for something else than your spouse's work. No. If you have an agreement with your own company to use your spouse's company car and get refund, yes.

I had a similar problem in the past.

Company rules said, if you go by public transport, you have to produce receipts for real costs incurred and get those reimbursed. If you drive, you just claim the mileage without any further paperwork and you get money (much more money than for the train). I had a GA and so had nothing to claim. I argued with our accounts guy about this and at first he stuck to his guns but later he said, it's OK to send in a screenshot of the SBB website to show the train prices. We did this for a while but later he got trouble from his boss so he said I should instead claim the car miles as nobody can prove anything either way. So we settled on that for a while but then he backpedalled on that too and finally he agreed to refund the full costs of my GA, which was far more than I'd been asking for and so I was happy.

So whenever there are no absolute rules, there is often room to negotiate.

Normally a company car is not for work only. You can do with it what you want. It's just part of your compensation package, rather than money.

Exactly.

So since it's already part of your spouse package, you can't go and claim the use of it to your company.

Same with the train tickets. It's part of your spouse package, you don't go and claim it back to your company.

So if your spouse gives you a car as a birthday present, and you use it for the company, you can not claim for that as it isn't your money?

I worked for several companies where business use of a company car for someone else, like the spouse, was prohibited by policy.

Sure you do. You are providing something of value to the company. Where and how you got it is, in my opinion, irrelevant.

My firm only requires me to produce screenshots of the SBB cost for the trip, and they pay the half fare cost of the ticket. Official policy, full stop. Doesn't matter if I have a GA, point-to-point that covers it, or happen to buy that ticket. They have a business requirement that requires me to be in a certain place, and they therefore need to pay for me to get there; as non-owner (for a few more years, anyway) there's no call for me to be contributing to their expenses - just as they don't pay for me to travel to work from home.

Fortunately, my firm has thought all this out and has a clear policy on it, but it seems sensible to me.

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I'm likely typing from an iPad. Please disregard odd word usage.

The "spouse GA" should be listed on the "Lohnausweis" (i.e. salary overview for the taxes) of the spouse working in the public transportation business as an additional benefit with a corresponding value.

In essence it is equivalent to money being given to spouse from which he or she buys here significant other a GA. For that reason it will/should also be taxed as income (its not "free").

So in my opinion you can justify "claiming" expenses for the GA if you are using it for business purposes since the only difference is that instead of paying for the GA out of pocket, the spouse is doing it out of her salary package. If you are married I do not see this a problem of the spouse "paying" for the GA, since travel expenses would likely be a joint family expense.

However, I would say the value of the GA will be limited to what is mentioned in the Lohnausweis (and I am assuming that will be somewhat discounted), and you might need to show the Lohnausweis in place of a receipt...

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Liability for any statements hereinabove excluded! - Need a Swiss lawyer PM me.

if the spouse buys you a car and use it for your work and the company accept to refund the km. fine.

If your spouse buys you a car, you won't go to your company to ask them to refund you the price of the car, would you? Same with the train ticket.

I think your spouse's company might be miffed that s/he was lending out a car that s/he was provided in order to do her/his job. My mother was not allowed to drive my father's company car, especially for her business purposes!
I don't have a car here so not sure how the insurance works but in the UK my dad's company insured his car for him to drive for business and private purposes, and my mum insured her car for private and work purposes for herself and had my father as a named driver. He was not insured to drive my mum's car for business.

Anyway, milage is for the cost of insurance, fuel, and wear-and-tear etc, not original purchase, so not really a good comparison

This is also something I thought.

The transport company issues a GA for free to the employer and spouses as the benefit package. You should enjoy all the benefit and obligation that come with it. When it comes for reimbursement, it should be treated as if you bought the GA.

On the other hand, for example, even if you do not really pay for this GA, it will be included in the yearly tax declaration as additional income and it is taxable at a full GA price.

But I am not sure though. That's why I ask...

As an aside, I have been informed that my company will pay for lunch up to a small amount of franks without a receipt. I took that to mean that if I bought lunch for myself with a dozen other people and didn't get a copy of the receipt that I could still claim for what I spent rather than I can have my lunch paid for by the person I was visiting and then claim again, not so much as a free lunch, but getting paid to have a free lunch.

There's reimbursement and there's taking the Micky.

P.s.
tr.v. re·im·bursed, re·im·burs·ing, re·im·burs·es
1. To repay (money spent); refund.
2. To pay back or compensate (another party) for money spent or losses incurred.

No loss incurred... No claim for reimbursement.

just put the claim in with a scanned copy front and back of the GA. It's an entitlement, you should take it.....

If they ask, just be honest. You should not be excluded just because Nil says so.