German Inheritance Tax Calculator

Start with the beneficiary's acquisition

Enter the share of the acquisition belonging to you at its established tax value. Parents and grandparents inheriting from descendants belong to class I with a EUR 100,000 personal allowance. This differs from gifts to those same recipients.

The estimate assumes unlimited German tax liability and already established tax values. Optional inputs cover household effects and other movables under §13, a confirmed qualifying family home, and §17 maintenance relief. The latter applies only on death to a spouse/civil partner or child, depends on age for children and is reduced by the confirmed capital value of non-inheritance-taxable survivor benefits. Business relief, marital equalisation, care exemptions and cross-border cases remain excluded.

Ten years and the same donor

Positive prior acquisitions from the same person are added at their former tax values when they fall within the statutory ten-year window. Enter their total before personal allowance and tax. You must check the date boundary and assessments yourself; individual acquisition dates are not collected.

The calculation credits either the prior tax recomputed under current personal circumstances and rules, or the higher actual tax payable. Tax on the current acquisition without aggregation is the minimum. For a further acquisition, the statutory 50% ceiling is also applied. Gift chains spanning more than ten years and revised assessments require individual review.

One rate with statutory hardship relief

The taxable acquisition is rounded down to a full EUR 100. One table rate then applies to that whole amount. At a threshold, §19(3) limits the increase over tax at the previous boundary to half the excess for rates up to 30%, or three quarters for higher rates. These are not marginal income-tax bands.

Estate debts and acquisition costs are deducted only in the amount you confirm is deductible. Co-heirs must enter their allocated share. The estate-wide EUR 15,000 lump sum must not be multiplied by the number of heirs or added to the same substantiated costs.

Work from your own acquisition, not the entire estate

Where several people inherit together, the calculator needs the value allocated to the individual recipient. Do not enter the entire estate for each heir or divide the final tax equally after calculating it for only one person. Different beneficiaries can have different relationships, personal allowances and relevant prior acquisitions. The result is therefore personal to the recipient and the person from whom the acquisition arises. Build a short asset-and-liability statement showing the recipient's share before transferring the relevant figures into the form.

Confirm which liabilities and acquisition costs are deductible and how they are allocated. The same cost should not appear once as an estate debt and again in another deduction field. A shared lump sum is not multiplied simply because there are several heirs. The form accepts an amount you confirm is deductible; it does not independently determine all restrictions, prove a debt or allocate expenses between beneficiaries. This distinction helps explain why a calculator result may differ from an assessment that applies an additional factual or valuation adjustment.

Apply confirmed relief and keep its conditions visible

Household effects, eligible movables, a qualifying family home and an inheritance-only maintenance allowance can reduce tax beyond the ordinary personal allowance. Enter only disjoint asset components already included in the acquisition total. Family-home relief requires your confirmation of the actual use, ownership and retention conditions; the calculator does not establish those facts. The child's 200 m² limit uses the whole dwelling area, not only your ownership share. Business and care-related exemptions remain outside this model. Compare the relief breakdown with the evidence rather than treating a higher estimate as proof that no further exemption exists.

Relationship also has to be read in the correct direction. The form describes who the recipient is in relation to the deceased. A child receiving from a parent is a different relationship from a parent receiving from a child. The latter also illustrates an important difference between inheritance and gifts: the ordinary class and allowance can change with the acquisition type. Select the relationship afresh when moving between the two calculators rather than carrying a superficially similar label across without checking its meaning.

Plan the payment alongside administration of the estate

Use the estimate to identify the likely scale of the tax and which documents are still missing. Retain valuation evidence, the allocation between heirs, the relevant earlier-transfer records and the assumptions about deductible costs. Compare a revised scenario by changing one uncertain item at a time. The calculator does not issue a tax notice or determine when a payment is due. Where assets are illiquid, keep the expected payment and the cash available for it visible in your separate estate budget, rather than treating the remaining asset value as spendable money.

Tax value, available cash and the amount left over

Use the tax value of the acquisition rather than automatically entering its purchase price or the amount of cash received. A property, a business interest and an investment portfolio may require different valuation work before the calculator can be used. The form accepts a value you have already established; it does not conduct a property valuation or decide whether an asset qualifies for a special exemption. Keep the underlying valuation and assessment documents with your comparison so that a later change can be traced to the right input.

The remaining-value result subtracts estimated tax from the value entered. It does not necessarily represent cash available in a bank account. Someone receiving a house can owe tax while receiving little liquid money. Sale costs, continuing loan payments, maintenance and timing of payment are separate planning issues. If an input changes because a valuation is revised, rerun the whole calculation rather than scaling the old tax amount proportionally. The personal allowance, whole-acquisition rate and hardship adjustment can make the relationship between value and tax nonlinear.

Prepare earlier transfers before making a comparison

List earlier positive acquisitions from the same person before entering their aggregate. Check the statutory period and original tax values, not merely the amounts that happened to be paid into your account. Acquisitions from different people must not be combined just because the recipients belong to the same household. Likewise, an allowance is not renewed by splitting one transfer across several payments. The calculator accepts a manually checked aggregate; it cannot infer the legal window from a single total without the underlying dates.

The field for earlier tax concerns the relevant actual tax payable, not an arbitrary estimate or the cash left after tax. The calculation compares that figure with the statutory recomputation credit and applies its other limits. Keep decisions and amendments accessible where earlier assessments changed. If a case involves multiple overlapping transfer chains, foreign tax, disputed values or transactions outside the stated scope, a short numerical illustration cannot resolve those facts. Use the output to understand which inputs matter and to prepare questions based on your documents.