It would be a small revolution. Ironically, the CDU, which so far has absolutely nothing to do with a sensible reform of inheritance tax in Germany and prefers to live on with the botch that it created a few years ago in the coalition with the SPD – of all people, the CDU is now beginning at least one to think about.
Jens Spahn still has plans, you know that. The party vice uses the opportunity of the program work to present himself as a modernizer and to pave the way for an inheritance tax model that will be simpler, fairer and possibly also more profitable for the tax authorities than the previous one. The latter is rightly described in the Spahn paper as complicated, bureaucratic and prone to abuse.
A uniform tax rate of ten percent on all inheritances, large and small, would be a real breakthrough in this type of tax. Of course with personal allowances, that’s fine if they’re not too high. But without exception also in the case of company heirs – who now even go as far as being spared thanks to sometimes bizarre-looking procedures that at best make law firms richer.
The CDU has finally recognized that for a fairly wealthy society in which more than 400 billion euros are passed on to heirs every year, broad-based taxation is urgently needed. Because inheritances are nothing more than income for those who have them, and they are non-performing.
The German tax system puts too much of a strain on work, especially in the middle classes – and on wealth and very high incomes too little. If assets are transferred, even small ones, then it is a matter of justice towards those who inherit little or nothing, to charge moderately for this additional income. In this respect, one can only hope that the Spahn advance will not wither – for example because the notorious naysayer called CSU is again obstructing. To prevent this, the tax should flow to the federal government in the future.
Albert Funk works in the capital city office of the daily mirror
