Inheritance tax exemption does not apply to adjacent garden

A garden adjacent to the owner-occupied house on a separate parcel of land does not fall under the inheritance tax exemption for a family home.

The inheritance tax exemption for an owner-occupied family home does not extend to an adjacent garden plot. This also applies if both parcels are uniformly enclosed and form an economic unit. For the Düsseldorf Fiscal Court, it is clear that the tax exemption is to be understood in a civil law sense, according to which a plot of land is the area entered in the land register with its own number. However, the Tax Court has allowed an appeal due to the fundamental importance of the case.