Joachim Lang (legal scholar)

Joachim Lang (born October 22, 1940 in Munich ; † September 25, 2018 ) was a German legal scholar . He was a professor of tax law at the University of Cologne and a prominent representative of the “ Cologne Tax Law School ” founded by Klaus Tipke .

Life

From 1960 to 1965, Joachim Lang completed his law degree in Munich, including with Karl Larenz , whose methodology has influenced him to this day. After a legal traineeship and the second state examination in Bavaria, he briefly worked in the corporate legal department of a stock corporation .

In 1970 he moved to the North Rhine-Westphalian financial administration and two years later to the Federal Ministry of Finance. During this time, Lang wrote his dissertation on the "systematization of tax breaks ". After receiving his doctorate in 1974, he accepted Klaus Tipke's offer to do his habilitation at his institute in Cologne. Eight years as an assistant he published his post-doctoral thesis "The assessment basis of income tax". The statements on family taxation contained herein were used in 1982 by the Federal Constitutional Court in its landmark judgment on the splitting of spouses .

After his first appointment at the Technical University of Darmstadt , he took over the Institute for Tax Law at the University of Cologne from his teacher Tipke in 1988. There he continues Klaus Tipke's “Systematic Outline of Tax Law” as the classic textbook “Tipke / Lang”.

Until 2006, in addition to his work as director of the Institute for Tax Law at the University of Cologne, Lang was editor of the respected journal Steuer und Wirtschaft , which serves as a scientific platform for all tax sciences . In 2006 Joachim Lang retired. Johanna Hey succeeded him as director of the Institute for Tax Law . Since then, Lang has been Of-Counsel at the management consultancy KPMG in Cologne. Until 1999, Lang was chairman of the German Tax Law Society .

Act

One of Lang's greatest concerns was the systematization of tax law. In 1985, for example, he submitted a draft reform of the basic provisions of the Income Tax Act, which only includes a fraction of the current text, with the aim of fair taxation with clear and transparent structures.

In 1993, commissioned by the Federal Ministry of Finance, he drafted a 1700-paragraph code for all types of taxes, which was to serve as a model law for the Eastern European countries. With this tax code, Lang attempted to combine the teachings of the Cologne tax law school with the findings of modern finance .

At the end of 1998 he was appointed by the Federal Ministry of Finance as deputy chairman of the Commission for the Reform of Corporate Taxation, whose “Brühler Recommendations” were only partially adopted as part of the “Tax Reform 2000”.

Motivated by a call for tenders from the Frankfurt Humanist Foundation, Joachim Lang convened a working group made up of members of the Cologne school in 2003 to formulate a new income tax law. After two years of work, the “Cologne Draft of an Income Tax Act” was presented in February 2005, which, in contrast to other draft reforms for an income tax reform, does not provide for a completely redesigned income tax system, but rather brings the applicable law back to its basic structures. Among the 19 proposals submitted, the “Cologne draft” was one of the four drafts that were shortlisted by the jury, with the first two places going to Joachim Mitschke and Michael Elicker .

In 2004, Lang was appointed chairman of the “Tax Code” commission, which was brought into being by the Berlin “ Marktwirtschaft ” foundation . It includes more than 70 experts from practice, business, science and politics. The aim is to fundamentally reform the German tax system and to summarize the individual laws in a tax code by 2006. The “Cologne draft of an income tax law” is to become part of this code in a further developed form.

In 2005, Joachim Lang was one of the nominees for the “Reformer of the Year” election, awarded by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung and the New Social Market Economy initiative ; Readers and jury voted Lang in second place.

Joachim Lang's academic students include Roman Seer , Johanna Hey , Joachim Englisch and Hans-Ulrich Herrnkind .

Fonts

• Systematisation of tax breaks. A contribution to the teaching of the taxable event. Duncker and Humblot, Berlin 1974, ISBN 3-428-03086-9 .
• The base of income tax. Legal systematic basics of tax performance in German income tax law. Otto Schmidt, Cologne 1988, ISBN 3-504-23024-X .
• with Klaus Tipke : Tax Law. 12th edition. Otto Schmidt, Cologne 1989, 21st edition 2012, ISBN 978-3-504-20145-6 .
• Draft of a tax code (= series of publications by the Federal Ministry of Finance. Issue 49). Published by the Federal Ministry of Finance, Public Relations Department. Stollfuss, Bonn 1993.
• Cologne draft of an income tax law. Otto Schmidt, Cologne 2005, ISBN 3-504-23025-8 .
• with Michael Eilfort : Structural reform of German income taxes. Report on the work and drafts of the “Tax Code” commission of the Market Economy Foundation. Olzog, Munich 2013, ISBN 978-3-7892-8212-6 .

Web links

• Literature by and about Joachim Lang in the catalog of the German National Library
• Literature by and about Joachim Lang (legal scholar) in the bibliographic database WorldCat

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Joachim Lang obituary , FAZ from October 6, 2018.
2. ^ Mitschke, Renewal of German Income Tax Law, 2004.
3. ^ Elicker, Draft Proportional Net Income Tax, 2004.
4. ↑ Competition - Wanted: Who will be the reformer of the year 2005?