The tax and fiscal reforms headed by German finance minister Matthias Erzberger in 1919 and 1920 fundamentally reshaped German public finances. The total tax revenue as a percentage of GDP, or tax-to-GDP ratio, doubled and increased continually until the end of World War II. Since the 1950s, the...

If the desire is to provide tax relief to households with lower and middle incomes in Germany, it is necessary to target the valueadded tax rather than the personal income tax. Lowering the standard value-added tax rate by one percentage point (from 19 to 18 percent) would mean relief worth 11...

Our research shows that in the ongoing discussion concerning ‘the social dimension of Europe’, it appears that there is much to gain if the tax policy interaction between Member States and the European Union, which is currently taking place within the European Semester, could be extended to...

E-commerce on the Internet will create new demands on taxation. In the field of income and business taxation there exists a large potential for profit-shifting into low-tax countries, especially concerning transfers of immaterial goods and transfer pricing. In the long run, this can lead to a...