Overview
- Thursday’s ZDF ‘Sarah Tacke’ show featured a heated exchange between Kevin Kühnert, who defends the SPD inheritance-tax concept, and economist Bernd Raffelhüschen, who sharply challenged its feasibility.
- The SPD proposal targets very large inheritances and envisions average top-end rates of about 2–3 percent on multimillion- and billionaire-level estates, affecting only a few dozen cases but aiming to raise billions in revenue.
- Critics warned that taxing inheritances would require difficult asset valuations, create heavy administration and litigation costs, and could endanger family-business succession by forcing sales or relocations.
- Raffelhüschen and some business voices offered an alternative: a surtax on high incomes (a ‘Reichensteuer’) to capture wealth without the complex valuation and bureaucracy of an inheritance levy.
- The debate has a strong political and media dimension because Kühnert now leads taxes at advocacy group Finanzwende, tabloids highlighted the rebuke he received on air, and no legislative change has yet been adopted.