Overview
- The SPD plan proposes a €1 million personal allowance and a €5 million business allowance, progressive rates, and payment deferrals up to 20 years tied to job protection.
- Chancellor Friedrich Merz and Union leaders reject the concept as a burden on the Mittelstand and urge waiting for the Federal Constitutional Court ruling expected this year.
- NRW premier Hendrik Wüst calls the timing poor and warns that succession-stage taxes could unsettle companies after recent investment incentives.
- CDU workers’ chief Dennis Radtke presses his party to close inheritance-tax loopholes, arguing the state forfeits billions and that shielding small firms should not exempt vast fortunes.
- On ZDF’s Markus Lanz, CSU’s Martin Huber floated regionalising the tax and lowering it in Bavaria, drawing a rebuttal from Green co-leader Franziska Brantner citing the Bavarian constitution; SPD’s Wiebke Esdar counters wider criticism by saying about 85% of firms would pay nothing under the plan.