Inheritance tax after the Bundestag elections

The po­li­ti­cal par­ties have not ex­pli­citly ta­ken si­des on whe­ther pu­blic po­licy con­side­ra­ti­ons ju­stify the spe­cial ex­emp­ti­ons gran­ted for busi­ness as­sets un­der in­heri­tance tax law. They are pro­bably waiting for the de­ci­sion of the Fe­deral Con­sti­tu­tio­nal Court. The ru­ling par­ties in par­ti­cu­lar are li­kely to take the view that the new ru­les de­ci­ded on in 2008 took suf­fi­ci­ent ac­count of the re­asons for the pre­fe­ren­tial tre­at­ment. They have ad­dres­sed the con­cern that the pre­fe­ren­tial tre­at­ment can be un­con­sti­tu­tio­nally ex­ten­ded to no­nes­sen­tial busi­ness as­sets by enac­ting ru­les ai­med at pre­ven­ting Cash GmbH's. Prior to the de­ci­sion of the Fe­deral Con­sti­tu­tio­nal Court, the CDU/CSU and the FDP see no fur­ther need to ad­dress in­heri­tance tax law, alt­hough they would ar­gue that it ought to be fur­ther de­ve­lo­ped and sim­pli­fied. They would also like to in­tro­duce a uni­form tax ba­sis mea­su­red on fair mar­ket va­lues, with mo­de­rate tax ra­tes and ap­pro­priate de­duc­tions.

The SPD, on the other hand, would like to put a stop to all abu­ses of tax struc­tu­ring op­ti­ons. To that end, they want to re­peal the spe­cial tre­at­ment of busi­ness as­sets that has been in force since 2009. Any pos­si­ble fu­ture pre­fe­ren­tial tre­at­ment would need to be more clo­sely con­nec­ted with the goal of pre­ser­ving sta­bi­lity in the job mar­ket.
If Al­li­ance 90/The Green Party were to come into power, they would at­tempt to dou­ble the in­heri­tance in­come tax. They would re­peal the ex­emp­tion of busi­ness as­sets from in­heri­tance tax while pro­tec­ting com­pa­nies from the re­sul­ting bur­den by me­ans of ap­pro­priate de­duc­tions.

The Left Party in­tends to si­gni­fi­cantly in­crease re­ve­nue from in­heri­tance tax. To ac­com­plish this, they plan to re­peal all tax be­ne­fits for peo­ple in­heri­ting com­pa­nies that are not ne­cessary for the pro­tec­tion of jobs.

In the fi­nal ana­ly­sis, it re­mains to be seen whe­ther any ad­di­tio­nal con­crete tax bur­dens for com­pa­nies and/or pri­vate in­di­vi­du­als can be ex­pec­ted to re­sult from the va­rious party plat­forms – they are far too va­gue. Howe­ver, if the Fe­deral Con­sti­tu­tio­nal Court de­ci­des that the tax ex­emp­ti­ons are un­con­sti­tu­tio­nal, the pre­re­qui­si­tes for ex­emp­tion of busi­ness as­sets from in­heri­tance tax will un­doub­tedly be tigh­te­ned si­gni­fi­cantly.