In addition to yesterday´s ruling by the Federal Constitutional Court (we reported on this) there is an interesting figure published by the Federal Statistical Office: the inheritance and gift tax base amounted to 3.8 billion Euros in the year 2006. Almost half of it came from North Rhine-Westphalia (851 million Euros) and Bavaria (838 million Euros).
The tax base in the new Federal states (including East Berlin) amounted to just 63 million Euros. Both kinds of tax are revenue of the Federal States.
Compared to the past year the revenue from inheritance and gift taxes decreased by 8.1%. However, if looking at a 10 years period it becomes clear that the inheritance and gift tax base has almost constantly increased. Back in 1997 this tax base stood at just 2.1 billion Euros. According to the last statistical data on these kinds of taxes from the year 2002, 80% of the total amount is accounted for by inheritance and 20% by gift tax. 