Karl Theodor von Inama-Sternegg, Erbschaftssteuern und Erbrechtsreform (1879)

In this critical review of the second, thoroughly revised edition of Hanns von Scheel’s Erbschaftssteuern und Erbrechtsreform (1877), Inama-Sternegg distinguishes the justification of inheritance taxation from the transformation of inheritance law. His central claim is that an inheritance tax can have a defensible place within an imperfect fiscal system without making the state a universal co-heir. The review moves from the constitutional grounds of taxation through a technical fiscal counterargument to a defense of inheritance rights against Scheel’s distributive social policy.

Inama begins by connecting public finance to constitutional law: taxation intervenes in private property and therefore requires both formal authorization and a substantive justification grounded in the state’s purposes. Yet not every existing tax can be deduced from first principles.

Denn es gibt eben Steuern, die sich in der bezeichneten Weise nicht rechtfertigen lassen und nur in ihrem geschichtlichen Werden und nach ihrer praktischen Bedeutung für ein bestehendes Steuersystem gewürdigt werden können.

English translation: For there are indeed taxes which cannot be justified in the manner indicated and can be appreciated only in their historical development and according to their practical significance for an existing tax system.

This distinction governs his assessment. He praises Scheel for seeking a principled justification rather than treating convenience, harmlessness, and revenue yield as sufficient theoretical grounds. Nevertheless, he disputes Scheel’s conclusion that inheritance duties cannot be justified as taxes. Scheel argues that the state, having recognized private property and private capital as foundations of economic production, should tax income without encroaching on those foundations. Inheritance duties appear to violate that rule because they burden wealth transfers and vary with kinship rather than the recipient’s total taxable capacity.

Inama’s answer challenges the sharp economic separation between taxing income and taxing capital. Taxes on returns also diminish the capital value of the assets producing them. Transfer duties can therefore supplement taxes that fail to capture actual returns fully. Inheritance taxation has a particular supplementary function: when the deceased’s income ceases and property yields pass into the heirs’ incomes, the state can collect in advance a capitalized amount corresponding to income tax that would otherwise escape assessment.

Aber eine Rechtfertigung für den Staat, eine Erbschaftssteuer angesichts der noch immer bestehenden Unvollkommenheiten der Einkommensbesteuerung zu erheben, ist darin denn doch zu erblicken.

English translation: But a justification for the state to levy an inheritance tax in view of the still existing imperfections of income taxation is after all to be discerned therein.

This is deliberately a limited defense, not a claim to have established an absolute principle. Inama also connects rates graduated by kinship to economic continuity within the family: the closer the relationship, the stronger the continuity between the deceased’s household economy and that of the heir, and the weaker the proposed fiscal rationale for imposing the duty.

The review then turns to Scheel’s alternative justification. Unable to defend the levy purely as taxation, Scheel makes it an instrument of inheritance reform and state correction of wealth distribution. He invokes both the weakening of solidarity among distant relatives and the state’s contribution to the production of private fortunes.

Daraus ergibt sich für den Verfasser, dass der Staat von jeder Verlassenschaft einen Theil wegen dieser Mitarbeiter-schaft bei der Production in Anspruch nehmen darf; dass dieser Anspruch wächst, je ferner die Verwandtschaft des Erben, weil das Verdienst des Staates an der Production des Vermögens gleichbleibt, während das wirthschaftliche Verdienst und der sociale Anspruch des Erben immer kleiner werden, und dass der Staat endlich ganz in die Erbschaft eintritt, wenn bis zu einem gewissen Verwandtschaftsgrad (Verfasser meint, noch in der grossväterlichen Parental) keine Intestat-erben vorhanden und keine Testamentserben eingesetzt sind.

English translation: From this it follows for the author that the state may claim a portion of every estate on account of this collaboration in production; that this claim grows the more distant the kinship of the heir, because the state's merit in the production of the wealth remains the same while the economic merit and the social claim of the heir become ever smaller; and that the state finally enters entirely into the inheritance if, up to a certain degree of kinship (the author has in mind as far as the grandpaternal parentela), no intestate heirs are present and no testamentary heirs have been appointed.

Inama accepts that distant collateral intestate succession may be restricted and that the state may receive estates without heirs. He rejects the broader inference that public participation in wealth creation establishes a right of co-inheritance. That participation already helps justify taxation; turning it into a succession claim confuses distinct legal grounds. He also charges Scheel with undervaluing the family’s intergenerational continuity and importing socialist notions of just distribution and inheritance according to the heir’s merit.

The decisive conceptual boundary is between an heir’s right to succeed to the deceased’s economic personality and the state’s authority to tax. Where inheritance rights exist, Inama denies that the state can simply insert itself as another heir. The review’s relevance lies in this separation of fiscal compensation from distributive reconstruction: it defends inheritance taxation pragmatically while resisting an account of it that would alter the legal meaning of inheritance itself.