Journalists they teach that it is not news when a dog bites a man, but when a man bites a dog.
Thus, at the end of 2022, the German media could hardly wait to report that a man in the province of Hesse had really bitten a dog. And that of the police, during the arrest.
But we had to wait almost three more years for an event even less likely than that to happen - the billionaires paid tax to the inheritance!
Such news arrived at the end of June, when the heirs of the late Heinz Hermann Thiele had to transfer as much as four billion euros in taxes to the province of Bavaria. It is an absolute record in Germany.
A law full of loopholes
It's not that Germany lacks billionaires, but the law is full of loopholes. Some would say – intentionally full of holes.
What is not given to a small man, it is to a billionaire. Thus, almost no tax is paid when inheriting companies and business empires, provided that the heirs continue the business.
On other assets, a rich person can avoid tax if he declares his place of residence abroad in time. Or if he transfers all his assets to a "foundation", then when he dies, he officially has nothing, and his heirs "manage" the foundation.
That's exactly what Thiele, a man who got rich producing brakes for trucks, trains and so on, his company wanted Knorr Bremse it employed tens of thousands of people. He came to be the second largest single shareholder Lufthansa.
Lust and greed
Thiele died in 2021, leaving a personal fortune of 15 billion euros. He was one of the richest Germans.
And he wanted in time, three years before his death, to establish a "foundation" that would be managed by his wife. However, quarrels, lawsuits and disputes broke out among the family. So it turned out that the tax avoidance foundation was only validly registered last year.
And that means, when Thiele died, the foundation was not yet active. Therefore, the heirs-billionaires had to allocate a huge tax of four billion euros. That news was announced only recently, the money was paid in April this year.
"Even after the biggest inheritance tax in history, the family will somehow manage to make ends meet," writes the ironically leftist Tageskeitung. The paper points out that the system allows the ultra-rich to get off easy.
Last year in Germany, for example, a total of only ten billion euros was collected in inheritance tax. This year, thanks to the greed of Thiele's heirs, there will be a little more.
This tax belongs to the provinces, in this case – Bavaria.
