Succession
Inheritance tax has a ceiling — and it is far away
Progressive rates ceased to be a state's option. The movement has only one direction.
Tax on inheritance and gifts is a state tax, and its ceiling is federal: Federal Senate Resolution 9 of 1992 set 8% as the maximum rate. For thirty years that ceiling was a decorative figure — most states charged 4%, some less, and progressiveness was an option few exercised. Constitutional Amendment 132/2023 changed the verb: progressiveness went from option to obligation. The ceiling stayed where it was; what changed was the direction in which everyone is now walking in relation to it.
The arithmetic is simple and, for that very reason, uncomfortable. Doubling a rate from 4% to 8% doubles the cost of transferring — and that cost falls on assets the family usually has no intention of selling: the farm, the warehouse, the stake in the business. The tax is on wealth, but payment is in cash, and that is where the arithmetic meets reality. It is not rare for families to discover, at the worst possible moment, that the only way to pay the tax on an asset was to sell that asset — usually in a hurry, which is the worst adjective one can add to a sale.
It is worth saying plainly what a serious house does not promise: a holding company is not a trick. A structure assembled solely to reduce tax, with no substance, no governance and no business purpose, is exactly the one that unravels in the first audit — and the cost of unravelling it comfortably exceeds the tax it meant to avoid. What a good structure does is something else, and more valuable: it defines who decides what, what happens when someone wants out, how a share is valued, who chairs the family council. Tax saving is a consequence of an organisation that would have been worth building anyway.
The test takes two phone calls. First: what is your state's current rate, and is it progressive? Second: is there a bill before the state assembly to change it? Both answers are public and take an afternoon. With them in hand, the succession conversation stops being about mortality — a subject nobody wants to touch — and becomes a conversation about the legislative calendar, which is a perfectly civilised thing to discuss over lunch.
Diagnosis with defined scope, timeline and price; every thesis classified by risk, in writing, before any decision of yours. Execution follows the administrative route, with a calculation trail — and remuneration falls on realised benefit.
Official sources, at the exact point — the article of law, the service or the search you can use today. None replaces analysis of the specific case, which is our work.
No thesis moves forward without its classification written beside it. That is what separates a survey from a promise.
Say in two lines what you need to resolve. An account manager replies personally, in business hours, and the conversation starts where it makes a difference.
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