Inheritance

• What is 'personal property’?
• Requirements and provisions for exemption from customs duties
  • Requirements
  • Purpose limitation
  • Legal basis
  • Customs declaration, forms
  • Value-added tax on importation and particular excise duties

What is 'personal property’?

Although the goods are not subject to any specific quantity restrictions, they must not, by their nature or quantity, indicate that they are being imported for commercial reasons.

Personal property refers to

• household effects, that is, all personal items, household, bed, and table linen, furnishings, and items of equipment intended for the personal use of the testator or the testator’s household;
• private vehicles of any kind, that is, bicycles and motor bikes, cars (where applicable, with trailer), camping caravans, water sport craft, or private aircraft (on the basis of a certificate from the competent foreign authority showing that the vehicle/vessel and/or aircraft was registered in the name of the deceased in the country concerned);
• household provisions appropriate to normal family requirements;
• household pets and saddle animals;
• portable instruments and devices of the applied or liberal arts insofar as they had been needed by the deceased in the course of his/her work.

The following items are not deemed 'personal property’:

• alcoholic products, that is beer, wines, aperitifs with a wine or alcohol base, brandies, liqueurs, or spirit drinks, etc.;
• tobacco and tobacco products;
• commercial vehicles;
• articles for use in the exercise of a trade or profession, other than portable instruments of the applied or liberal arts;
• stocks of raw materials;
• stocks of finished and/or semi-finished products;
• livestock (other than the household pets and saddle animals mentioned above);
• stocks of agricultural products exceeding the quantities appropriate to normal family requirements.

Requirements and provisions for exemption from customs duties

Requirements

The potential beneficiaries are heirs and legatees who have their normal residence in the customs territory of the Community. Beneficiaries can be natural or legal persons. The latter are, though, restricted to legal persons engaged in a non-profit activity who are established in the customs territory of the Community.

• Heir: an heir is a person who, on the basis of legal inheritance or the provisions of a will, receives a share of the legacy of the deceased, while at the same time becoming the universal legal successor of the decedent and thereby assumes both the decedent’s rights and obligations.
• Legatee: a legatee is a person who is entitled (usually on the basis of a will) to a specific portion of the estate, though without assuming any other of the deceased person’s rights or obligations.

The goods must actually originate from the estate of a deceased person. A transfer of goods by a testator during his lifetime as part of an expected legacy does not result in relief from duty. However, the goods that a legatee or a joint heir purchases from the estate, whether at public auction or from a trader, also count as ‘personal property’.

Evidence of the legacy must be shown by, e.g. a certificate of inheritance, a will, or where appropriate, by other documents such as auction records or correspondence.

Relief shall be granted to the legatee only for personal property entered for free circulation within the set period, that is, not later than two years from the date on which the person concerned became entitled to the property, that is, two years after final settlement of the inheritance. Where particular circumstances so require, however, the period may be extended by the competent customs authorities.

Purpose limitation

The beneficiary may freely dispose of the goods immediately upon their release for free circulation; there is no specific purpose limitation.

Legal basis

Article 17 et seq. of Regulation (EC) no. 1186/2009

Customs declaration, forms

Goods for which it is intended to apply for special relief shall be declared for release for free circulation, by completing either a written or an electronic form. In the case of a written customs declaration, Copies 6 and 8 of the single administrative document (SAD) must be used.

Value-added tax on importation and particular excise duties

Goods that are personal property in the terms of law, and as such can be released for free circulation duty free, are exempted from the turnover tax on imports in Germany, but not from any excise duties that may be applicable.