German Inheritance and Gift Tax Reform 2009

Inhaltsangabe:Introduction: Background and Subject of this Thesis: After long negotiations within the Grand Coalition (Große Koalition) and despite jurisdictional criticisms of numerous points, on 31st December 2008 the new inheritance and gift tax law (Erbschaftsteuerreformgesetz - ErbStRG) was published in the Federal Law Gazette (Bundesgesetzblatt), to become effective on 1st January 2009 - just in time to avoid the need for retroactive regulations and the related discussions. This marks the end of the discussion about the future of the inheritance tax that has been started by the decision of the Federal Constitutional Court (Bundesverfassungsgericht - BVerfG) from 7th November 2006. The related uncertainity came to an end, at least for now. In its decision the Federal Constitutional Court states, that the discrepance between fair market value and valuation value for significant groups of assets (business assets, portions of coporations, real estate property and agriculture and forestry (AF) businesses) are violating the principle of equality of § 3 sec. 1 of the German Basic Law (Grundgesetz - GG). The legislative was obliged to define a new legislation in line with the constitution until 31 December 2008, latest. On 11 December 2007, the German Federal Government (Bundesregierung) finally agreed on a draft revision of the inheritance and gift tax law and the valuation law. The German Federal Parliament (Bundestag) passed the inheritance tax reform on 27 November 2008 in the 2nd and 3rd reading, during which the finance committee of the German Parliament (Finanzausschuss des Bundestages) made considerable changes to the original draft. The approval in the German Federal Council (Bundesrat) was obtained in the special session of the council on 5.12.2008, the approval of the Federal President (Bundespräsident) on 24.12.2008. Current Situation: In addition to the changes necessary for constitutional reasons, the central concern of the reform is to simplify business takeover by the successors. However, the legislator neither has had the courage to - as hoped by many - completely abolish inheritance taxation, not did he take the opportunity to perform a complete change of the inheritance taxation system which might become mandatory for constitutional reasons. The result is a compromise between of the various government parties: a law that amends the existing inheritance tax law on which it is based in a limited number of points. The new [...]