Inheritance Tax and Housing Policy: HfP Master’s Thesis Published in the journal notar.

“The December issue of notar – Monthly Journal for the Entire Notarial Practice of the German Notaries’ Association (https://www.dnotv.de/magazine/) features a summary of the master’s thesis by Ms. Corinna Doll, supervised at the Chair of Policy Analysis, on the role of inheritances and gifts in German housing policy. The thesis examined how inheritances and gifts in Germany are connected to housing policy, including whether the legal framework of inheritance and gift tax law has effects on the real estate market. The basis of the thesis consisted of semi-structured expert interviews, which were analyzed using qualitative content-structuring methods. The results were divided into two parts. The first part focused on substantive interrelations, such as adverse developments in regions with high land values, the concentration of market power in the housing market, or obstacles faced by socially motivated landlords. Overall, the thesis established a foundation for future research that can test the proposed variables. Until now, the policy fields of inheritance tax and housing policy have been considered too little in conjunction, both in research and in political practice. The second part of the results showed that the political debate has paid little attention to the topic and explored possible reasons for this. The article, now published as the ‘Contribution of the Month’ in notar, focuses on summarizing the first part of the results concerning the substantive connections between inheritance/gift tax and housing policy.