In the run-up to the 2013 election, the opposition parties of the German parliament have presented several tax reform proposals which first and foremost aim at increasing tax revenue and redistributing wealth. The focus is on reviving the wealth tax-which has not been levied since 1997-and on...

The German corporate tax reform of 2008 has brought about important cuts in corporate tax rates, which were at the same time accompanied by significant changes in the determination of the tax base for both major German corporate taxes - corporate income tax and trade tax. The reform followed the...

While there is a large and growing number of studies on the determinants of corporate tax rates, the literature has so far ignored the fact that the behavior of governments in setting tax rates is often best described as a discrete choice decision problem. We set up an empirical model that...