PUB - Publikationen an der Universität Bielefeld

The majority of Germans oppose Inheritance taxes. This is paradoxical insofar as most citizens would profit from the redistribution effects associated with them. The aim of this article is to make a contribution toward explaining this paradox. To this end, we conducted a factorial survey examining the effects of moral concepts, self-interest, and knowledge on attitudes and evaluations in regard to the equity of the inheritance tax code. Due to the current debate regarding the preferential taxation of inherited company assets we put a special focus on exemptions of this sort. Our results show that respondents support the progressive taxation of large inheritances, but also support tax relief for the Inheritance of company assets. Furthermore, our findings indicate that focusing on a frame of reference outside the personal interests of the respondents for evaluations in a factorial survey is critical in explaining negative attitudes towards inheritance taxes in survey items.