What should a fair tax system in Germany look like?

Our income tax system is quite fair. Many individual cases are taken into account, so it is also so complex.
m.E. However, it could be set down in the progression zone, i.e. the zone in which the tax rate rises progressively until you arrive at 42%, so that the progression rises less rapidly. The level of the tax in this area is simply too high.

The turnover tax is controlled by the EU and is therefore not influenced by Germany.

The trade tax can be calculated on income tax, at least for the most part depending on the survey community. It thus ensures that taxes go directly and in full to the municipalities. This is also good and fair.

In my opinion, the inheritance tax has been urgently needed to revise the law since the latest.
The newly revised valuation law (which we now see at the basic tax) will make real estate more important in the assessment of inheritance tax, which is therefore more expensive.
Some of them now find it good because they hope that people, in the social shift with high wealth and income, will return much heirs to the state and thus to society again by the high tax. That may be right.

But I see the other side of the medal very critical. We take a family who lives comparatively in a social shift, which has a lower wealth and income. These have tried to work high in your life to achieve a better standard, for themselves and the following generation of the family. You have reached your own fully paid detached house. This must now be inherited. The child, also with less wealth and income, cannot afford the ErbSt without credit, because it still needs to pay off its own home. It has to sell the property to eliminate the tax and lose it. Of course, there is more capital and there are also possibilities to circumvent the ErbSt, but another immobile as a capital investment and income source, this family, and also other families who are in similar situations, would use sustainably to build up wealth and thus reduce the scissors between poor and rich.
In addition, who will buy this real estate just at the time when credit has become so expensive? Right people or societies with already existing capital. In this way, wealth differences in society would only separate writers.

Of course, this is just a thought experiment, the reality can also look different… that we see from 2025. The ErbSt can be a useful tool to counterbalance differences in assets in society if this tax is also good for the broad society. At the moment, I personally see a danger in it that many abdominal pain should prepare.

I would also be interested in other aspects…. I didn’t think about anything.