Elisabeth Kaiser, the federal government’s East Commissioner and a member of the SPD, says that East Germans still receive far fewer inheritances and gifts than their western counterparts. “People in eastern German states get fewer gifts and inheritances than those in western states” a spokeswoman for Kaiser told the “Redaktionsnetzwerk Deutschland”. “And the amounts received are also substantially lower”.
In recent data, the average value of an inheritance in West Germany was about €92,000, while in the east it was only €52,000. The disparity is linked to the gap in household net wealth. In 2023, the average net wealth of households in the east was €170,100; in the west it was €364,900. “More and more East Germans feel that they are permanently disadvantaged because their starting conditions were unfairly distributed” the spokeswoman added. The lower wealth of many East Germans, she said, has nothing to do with their personal achievements.
Kaiser herself told the RND that she is committed to making the inheritance tax system fairer and simpler. “Heirs of very large fortunes currently benefit from a maze of exemptions and special rules” she said. Her goal is a system “without loopholes for extremely large fortunes”.
She also said that money saved by tightening the tax would flow back into the country-supporting schools, kindergartens, better education, and helping more people in the east buy their own homes. “If we can use the revenue to bridge the gap in home ownership, we will achieve a fairer distribution of wealth” she explained. “At the same time, we should look for ways to balance the tax revenue between the west, with many large inheritances, and the east, where fewer inheritances are taxed, in a spirit of solidarity”.
