Babbler-SPO has developed a new model for gift and inheritance tax, which is now available for Ö1-MorganJournal. What’s shocking about this is that it also apparently applies retroactively. Over 30 years of charity and legacy must be linked together.
For the taxation of capital assets – even more controversial – the model is not yet fully developed.
According to the SPO, this model only applies to large gifts and inheritances of one million euros or more. The SPO rejected the idea of setting the tax allowance at more than one million euros, reports Ö1. So inherited or gifted wealth of one to five million euros should be taxed at 25 percent. From five to ten million euros it would be 30 percent, and assets over that would be 35 percent.
In one point, the SPO model will probably give relief to citizens: an exemption amount of one million euros should in future also apply to the real estate transfer tax, which the SPO – perhaps not wrongly – calls the “true home builder tax”. This applies to every transfer of immovable property. However, this tax is much lower than the SPÖ model: tax rates currently range from 1.5 to 3.5 percent.
To calculate the exemption, all assets and legacies over a period of 30 years are added together. If the amount is less than one million euros, no tax is payable. Whether the 98 per cent inheritance at the end actually remains tax-free, as claimed by the SPO, requires clarification. Incidentally, real estate prices have been rising massively over the decades – even if this is not included in the inflation calculation.
