The government collected significantly more money from inheritance and gift tax last year, driven above all by transfers of large fortunes. Revenue rose by 61 percent year-on-year to around €21 billion, a new record, the Federal Statistical Office announced on Wednesday. Thirty-four large heirs received tax waivers totalling €3.7 billion, a figure criticised by the DGB trade union confederation, among others.
Most transfers of assets in Germany fall "within the tax-free allowances", the statistics office stressed. For children these stand at €400,000, and for spouses at €500,000. "In fact, according to the latest estimates, around 400 billion euros are inherited in Germany every year," said Sebastian Dullien, scientific director of the Institute for Macroeconomic Policy and Economic Research (IMK) at the Hans Böckler Foundation. Each year, assets roughly equivalent in volume to the federal budget are therefore inherited or given away.
According to the statistics office, assets worth €141.1 billion transferred by inheritance or gift were taken into account for tax purposes in 2025. At 23.1 percent higher than the previous year, this too was a record. Among the reasons cited are increased transfers of business assets — at €25.6 billion, these were 19 percent above the previous year's level. The marked increase of 60.8 percent in revenue compared with the previous year is, however, mainly attributable to a significantly higher number of large asset transfers of at least €20 million, the statistics office said.
Trade unions, environmental organisations and social associations, as well as the Left Party, criticised the tax waivers granted to large heirs. These have been possible since 2016 through the so-called Verschonungsbedarfsprüfung, an assessment of whether relief is needed, applying to business assets above €26 million. According to the statistics, €3.7 billion in tax was waived in this way last year, around ten percent more than in the previous year.
Together, the large heirs received assets of around €12 billion, the DGB reported. "On average they had to pay only around two percent inheritance tax on this, because 94 percent of the assessed tax was waived for them." The trade union confederation called for "finally a fair inheritance tax". The point, it said, is to hold large inheritances "more firmly to account".
The Finanzwende association stressed that the privileges for business heirs are "the largest tax subsidy in the federal budget", and said the federal government must scrap these subsidies.
Christian Görke, the Left Party's finance policy spokesman, also pointed to the "huge inequality between east and west". In 2025, €20.4 billion was assessed in the west, but only €0.97 billion in the east. This showed that the gap in the distribution of wealth is growing massively.
Marcel Fratzscher, president of the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW), said that just under €500 billion in total was given away or inherited in Germany last year. The fact that only four percent of this was collected in taxes "underlines how little wealth, and inheritances and gifts in particular, are taxed in Germany", he told the Rheinische Post.
It is "simply impossible to justify that income from work in Germany is taxed at up to 45 percent and most consumption at 19 percent, while inheritances and gifts are taxed at just four percent", he emphasised. The low taxation of inheritances and gifts "fundamentally contradicts the principle of merit, because inheritances and gifts are unearned income that in principle should not be taxed at a lower rate than income from work".
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