Marlene Engelhorn hadn’t given much thought to the wealth that surrounded her as she grew up. She always considered the fortune, inherited from Friedrich Engelhorn, the 19th-century founder of the German chemical giant BASF, to be her family’s money rather than hers.
1 This is like saying, since you work for your family’s business and since the business gets taxed on the profits they use to pay you, that you shouldn’t have to pay income taxes.
2 You can ALWAYS pay the tax. Since it’s based on the value of the items you inherited, you’d just have to decide which items you’re willing to sell to in order to pay the tax.
3 how many low income families do you know of that more that $10 million dollars in assets? >!FUCKING NONE! Because these strawmen don’t fucking exist!<
I’m specifically talking about very low income families since I am talking about the general pros and cons of applying an inheritance tax to all citizens since we are discussing why the inheritance tax might have been removed in Austria / German. I’m not familiar with international tax law to be more specific about income levels so I’m trying ro cover all bases.
If a poor family is sharing a car or a family restaurant, it could be very damaging to have to pay tax on these assets if they don’t have savings.
I understand that this doesn’t apply to families with large assets and I agree that an inheritance tax is generally a good thing when applied progressively.