"Can you go into more detail? I'm sure readers would find that interesting. If you are planning to buy a house, it would be good to know whether you will still be able to afford it in 20 years or whether it will be too expensive to keep. Isn't a wealth tax also a huge bureaucratic burden?"

"I don't know what your ideas are, but if you're planning to buy a villa from your entire fortune, then you'd be better off looking for a guardian. In realistic cases, this won't drive anyone into a rental property and it's not a huge bureaucratic burden. Compared to some other taxes, it is even a relatively small amount of work, at least the way I imagine it. The wealth tax will only affect easily measurable assets. This would therefore mainly be money, companies, real estate, securities, precious metals, precious stones and jewelry. The wealth tax will presumably have an exempt amount of around 50 million and an even higher limit for initial collection. This will affect very few people at all. So it's not a big effort."

"I didn't expect there to be such a high tax-free amount. That will certainly reassure a lot of people. But I still don't understand to what extent a high tax-free amount is supposed to keep bureaucracy to a minimum. After all, everyone's assets still have to be determined in order to know whether the tax-free amount applies in each case?"

"You imagine it to be much more complicated than it actually is. We don't have to calculate the assets of every citizen to find out who has to pay wealth tax. According to this logic, we would then also have to do the accounts of all companies in order to find out who has to pay company tax. But we don't do that. You register yourself with your figures and then random checks and inspections are carried out on suspicion, as with any other tax. Anyone who fails to report or demonstrably lies will be fined, as with any other tax. Anyone who has relevant assets certainly knows this about themselves. Nevertheless, there will still be an extra limit for the first tax assessment if you only briefly exceed the tax-free amount because your share portfolio increases in value for a short time, for example. For the taxpayer, too, the assessment would not involve much effort. The value of most things will be known. At worst, you might have to have individual properties revalued, but not grandma's antique vases, for example. I don't really care about such things. It's also not the case that you can avoid paying the tax. The country's millionaires are well known. The financial court already knows the names and assets of all the people who would be affected by a wealth tax. I had commissioned this for the evaluation and it took a department with 38 civil servants four months of work. So even without the obligation to self-declare, it would still be relatively easy to implement. The fact that this is supposed to be too much of a bureaucratic burden is a cheap excuse."

"If you are supposed to determine your own wealth, wouldn't it be very easy to play down your wealth?"

"You mean, could the rich cheat on a wealth tax as easily as companies cheat on corporation tax and end up paying nothing?"

"Yes, you could put it that way..."

"Actually, it's not that simple. As I said, it's only about easily measurable assets. Account balances, payments, securities and all that can still be checked retrospectively in terms of the exact amount. You shouldn't give a false value if you don't want to pay the fine later. In the case of company and real estate values, there would certainly be more scope for trickery, but if there are large discrepancies with the estimates from the financial court, this also quickly becomes apparent. The values of many properties and companies are also constantly estimated by independent valuation agencies. So there is a lot you can use as a guide if there are differences to the estimates from the financial court. If you now want to reduce your assets for the assessment value, you can of course start collecting only assets that are not measured in the first place. You can do that, because the value of works of art, for example, is not really relevant for the average person."

"It seems you want to take value directly from the financial market, but do you really think it's fair to tax unrealized gains? After all, the value of a share doesn't necessarily reflect its true value and if the major investors in a company are forced to sell their shares as a result of the tax, then the value will quickly fall."

"Now it's getting really ridiculous. I don't know what you're thinking, but we're talking here about a single-digit percentage of total assets. It will certainly be progressive, but the people for whom the maximum rate of perhaps 5% will then apply can almost be counted on one hand. At the lower end, it's more likely to be around 1-2% of total assets. In most countries, that wouldn't even compensate for inflation. In other words, you would just have to sit on your ass and you would still get richer. Honestly, if you can't even manage to increase your wealth by 2% per year, then you don't deserve to be rich. If that is too hard for you, then it's a wonder that a wealth tax is even relevant to you. Fortunately for you, the tax is only levied if you are above the tax-free amount and only applies to assets above that amount. There is a determination date. There is a due date. On the due date, you should already have the money in your bank account and no longer in shares. You have had a whole year to build up enough liquidity, but if you didn't want to do this or missed the date, you can certainly get a loan. If you can't manage that either, don't worry, we know where you live. I will be happy to send someone to come and collect some assets. If you have suffered a significant loss of assets between the date of determination and the due date, for example because you are very incapable, then you are welcome to contact the financial court beforehand so that this can be redetermined. After all, we don't want the money because we need it, but to prevent the distribution of wealth from getting out of hand. That is why it is also important that unrealized gains are also taxed. If I don't hit them, then I can leave the wealth tax altogether. If their shares rise and they take out a loan using them as collateral, then they have effectively tax-free income. If they always do this and don't act completely stupidly, they never pay taxes but get richer and richer. This is no longer so easy with the S-Mark, but it's still not impossible here domestically. I think it's quite adorable, but what does someone like that do for me as a citizen? What does he do for society? The state bank alone is not too stupid to throw money at companies. They can do that very well."

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

"Can you already say when the wealth tax will come?"

"I can't say exactly, but you shouldn't expect it within the next five years."

"Do you already have plans for a change to inheritance tax?"

"Before making any further changes to tax law, I would like to wait until everything that is currently being changed has taken effect. In the long term, there will be no increase, but rather a restructuring. Who can inherit what, with what allowances and under what conditions. Inheritance tax is not too low in the rates, but rather in the allowances and at the same time too avoidable. Gifts and donations and inheritances to distant relatives will then be treated equally in many cases."

"In Jena, the new Minister of Money recently spoke out publicly in favor of reducing the exemptions for business heirs in inheritance tax in the state and also increasing the inheritance tax percentage in some instances. This is certainly not going to happen. He has received a lot of headwind for this. Do you have an opinion on this?"

"I was there. I witnessed the commotion. If it had been legally possible, he would have been thrown out straight away. I also read the draft. It was for the wrong reasons, but it wasn't actually that unreasonable. It's a shame that it ended up in the bin. It would certainly have helped the country."

"So the exceptions we have will also be reduced?"

"I would expect there to be fewer exceptions, but inheritance tax is not a priority in the next few years, otherwise it would have been included today."

"Do you think it makes sense to remove the exceptions for business heirs in Jena? Wouldn't that be a heavy burden for companies and especially for medium-sized companies? After all, if the majority of an inheritance is business-related assets, you can't just pull millions in capital out of the company. The money is needed in the company so that further investments can be made; also to comply with new environmental protection regulations, but also simply so that the company remains successful."

"It's not necessarily wrong what you say, but it seems you misunderstand what the purpose of an inheritance tax is. You probably know that one game where you get money from the bank at the start. Everyone invests money to get everyone else's money. At the beginning of the game, everyone has the same amount of money, but at the end of the game, only one person has money. In a real society, it is not desirable that even one person has no money. For this reason, there must be mechanisms to retrieve money and distribute new money so that no one can win and the game never ends for anyone. If there is an inheritance tax of 8% for close relatives in a society and a company is part of such an inheritance, then 8% of this company inherits the society and nobody else. The state becomes a shareholder. The company does not care. However, the society does not want to have all the companies and that is why you are supposed to pay 8% of the value of the company back to the society instead. If you become a new shareholder in a company and don't have enough money to pay your taxes, you can simply sell some of your shares. The company does not care about that either. If they would rather withdraw capital from the company instead, then you can do that too. If you harm the company by doing so, then YOU harm the company, not the inheritance tax. If you think the business will continue to make a profit for you, then you shouldn't do it or you will do it anyway. But no matter what you do, the inheritance tax will do its job, which is to prevent you from receiving the full inheritance. In its current form, inheritance tax hits the middle class hard, but with the restructuring I will significantly increase the tax-free amounts and relieve the middle class. I don't care about small businesses."

.../ End Part