“Our institute distinctively follows an interdisciplinary approach. I am an economist myself and deal with the question of how tax policy can be designed sensibly. My colleague Prof. Reinald Koch, in turn, is an expert in the field of business taxation”, said Prof. Langenmayr on the occasion of the Institute’s inauguration. One of the planned topic areas of the Research Institute for Taxation is the influence of taxes on corporate decisions and structures. In addition, the Institute focuses on strategies for tax avoidance by multinational companies, the relationship between taxes and justice (e.g. with regard to inheritance taxation or questions of tax evasion) and, in this context, also the use of so-called tax havens.
The inauguration event of the new institute also marked the starting point of the closely connected Master’s degree program in Taxation, the first students of which were officially welcomed by degree program coordinator Prof. Dr. Reinald Koch at the event. He explained that the four-semester degree program combined business, law and economic points of view on the topic surrounding taxation. “Graduates of the degree program qualify for a profession in tax consultancy or tax departments of companies as well as for working in ministries, financial administration or international organizations”, said Koch. He also thanked the program’s renowned partners for their commitment in contributing interesting guest lectures and teaching assignments to the program. KU President Prof. Dr. Gabriele Gien emphasized in her speech that the close connection of the new Institute with the Master’s degree program took up the KU’s overall principle of “learning through research”. She thanked Ingolstadt Mayor Dr. Christian Lösel for city’s great commitment for KU and WFI. Lösel, who himself carried out research at the WFI, recalled that there had already been thoughts on establishing a taxation degree program at the beginning of the 2000s in the course of the Bologna reform. “I am delighted to see that the KU has made this important step in the right direction, especially because the quality of its research and teaching practice is repeatedly confirmed by external reviews”, said Mayor Lösel.
In his keynote speech on the topic “Taxation of Google, Facebook and Co.”, Prof. Dr. Johannes Becker (Director of the Institute of Public Economics at the University of Münster) touched upon current ongoing debates on how the international taxation system could be restructured. He explained that the way in which multinational corporations were taxed was not a new question and that it was already discussed in the 1920s, when the League of Nations had developed a compromise for its solution. Already back then, it was necessary to decide whether companies would only be taxed in the country in which their headquarters was located or also in other countries where they sold their products. At the time, it was agreed that a state could only demand taxes from a company if it had a permanent establishment in the country, such as e.g. an office with employees, a warehouse or a production facility. “But the digital economy actually operates in countries without even having to be physically present there. An advertising pillar with posters is seen as a place of business. A smartphone on which users watch advertisement, however, is not.”, says Becker. He went on to say that, considering these framework conditions, the current practice of international companies to transfer their profits to low-tax countries could not be described as tax evasion, but only as tax avoidance. In his speech, Becker gave an insight into a difficult and still ongoing discussion at the International Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) on the restructuring of the taxation of multinational corporations, in which a multitude of interests resonated. He explained that if higher taxes were levied in countries in which goods and services were sold, export-oriented countries, such as Germany, also lost tax revenue – for example, when a German car was delivered to the USA.
For further information on the Master’s degree program in Taxation, please visit www.ku.de/taxation.
