When is sucesssion duty payable?

The sucession tax is levied in the form of estate duty. The following will be liable for inheritance tax:

• the acquisition as an inheritance with a succession,
  
• the acquision through a legacy or similar,
  
• the acquisition due to the validly made requirement of a statutory share,
  
• the acquisition by donation on death and
  
• the acquisition due to the entering into of a contract by the testator, particuarly the pay out from a life insurance policy.
  
  

Succession tax is further expanded by § 3 Abs. 2 and § 4 & 6 of the ErbStG (Succession tax law), especially with specified asset acquirement.

Who pays the succession tax?

Tax liability is not, like with the succession duty, the estate of a person, but what a natural or legal person or a community of joint ownership gets out of the testator's estate. The capital transfer tax supplements the succession duty. It is necessary, so that the succession duty for the future hereditary transition cannot be avoided by the testator gifting the object in his lifetime. This means that items beqeauthed in the testator's life time are subject to the same taxation as gifts beqeauthed in the will. Succession duty is payable insofar as the testator was German resident at the time of his death or the beneficiary at the time of the succession.

Can tax be avoided by gifting items in the lifetime of the beqeauther?

No, the capital gains tax is a payable for every gift, gifted in the testator's lifetime without consideration as far as the testator or the beneficiary are German resident. For the gifting to a non-German resident tax is payable insofar as the domestic assets are classed as domestic assets by the Bewertungsgesetz (valuation law).