Wolfgang Kessler (economist)

Wolfgang Kessler (born February 15, 1956 in Offenbach am Main ) is a German economist. He holds the endowed chair for business taxation at the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg and is chairman of the local Center for Business and Law .

academic career

Kessler studied business administration at the universities of Frankfurt am Main and Cologne and successfully completed the business administration examination in 1984. He then worked as a research assistant at RWTH Aachen University. The current university professor received his doctorate in 1989 on the subject of "Typology of the company split-up: trusteeship, co-entrepreneurship and asset management". rer. pole. Two years later he was appointed tax advisor. In 1996 he completed his habilitation at the seminar for general business administration and business taxation at the University of Cologne . The topic of the habilitation thesis supervised by Norbert Herzig is "The Euro-Holding - Tax planning, choice of location, country profiles".

In 1995 and 1996, Kessler represented the chair for business taxation at the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz , before he was appointed professor at the endowed chair for business taxation at the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg in October 1996. In 2000, he turned down a call to the chair for German and international taxation at the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen .

Offices and memberships

• Kessler is the initiator and chairman of the Center for Business and Law (ZBL) at the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg. In 2004 he initiated the International Taxation MBA course. Together with Uwe Blaurock , Hanno Merkt , Bernd Raffelhüschen and Heinz Rehkugler, Kessler developed a further postgraduate, part-time further education course in 2008 - the MBA Estate Planning. On April 1, 2010, the Master of Arts (Taxation) started in cooperation with the Baden-Württemberg Cooperative State University Villingen-Schwenningen .
• Kessler also heads the scientific advisory board of the tax department of one of the major tax consultancy and auditing companies. As part of the corporate tax reform of 2008, the legislature based itself on the concept of the so-called "T-Model" developed by Kessler and the advisory board - retention benefits for private companies.
• Kessler is a founding member and first chairman of “Taxes in Research and Practice eV”. Since 2000, he has organized the annual conference series “Freiburg Working Conference - Taxation of Universities”.
• As a member of the Fachinstitut der Steuerberater , the Berlin Tax Talks eV and the Schmalenbach Society for Business Administration eV, Kessler is also actively involved in the further development of German tax law.
• Kessler is the initiator and founding partner of the Freiburg School of Business and Law GmbH - Tax Academy. The Tax Academy offers online training in tax law. It cooperates with the Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg im Breisgau.

Research priorities

Kessler understands business taxation as an application-oriented tax advisory science that researches the influence of national and international tax law on entrepreneurial activities. As part of the sub-discipline "Tax Effect and Tax Design Theory", Kessler examines in particular aspects of corporate taxation specific to the legal form , the taxation of legal entities under public law (e.g. university taxation) and the internationalization of conversion tax law. In addition, he deals with the tax planning use of holding companies and the tax-optimal financing structure of cross-border groups. In line with this, normative business taxation is another Kessler research area. In this context, current or intended tax regulations are critically assessed. So could z. For example, in the run-up to the corporate tax reform in 2008, various publications and a statement for the hearing in the German Bundestag demonstrated that the so-called " interest barrier " follows an unsystematic trend in the EU states, violates the objective net principle and far exceeds comparable regulations in other states shoots out. In addition, Kessler subjects EC tax law, including its implications for national tax law, to a critical analysis, e.g. as part of the annual checklist of potentially unlawful EC tax norms. Last but not least, the investigation of the connections between taxation and corporate accounting is another branch of Kessler's research. With increasing internationalization, elements of the internationally recognized accounting principles ( IFRS or US-GAAP ) also come into focus. One example of this is the US regulation on the use of uncertain tax positions (FIN 48).

Publications (selection)

The following works are among the most important publications by Kessler:

• The Euro-Holding - tax planning, location selection, country profiles, Munich 1996 (habilitation thesis)
• Typology of the business split: trusteeship, co-entrepreneurship and asset management, Wiesbaden 1989 (dissertation)
• Group tax law, National - International, 2nd edition, Verlag CHBeck 2008 [together with M. Kröner and S. Köhler]
• Choice of legal form - legal form optimization, Verlag CH Beck 2002 [together with J. Schiffers and T. Teufel]

In addition, Kessler wrote well over 100 specialist articles and book chapters.

Web links

• Literature by and about Wolfgang Kessler in the catalog of the German National Library
• Homepage of Wolfgang Kessler at the University of Freiburg
• Freiburg School of Business and Law GmbH - Tax Academy founded by Wolfgang Kessler
• "Master of Arts - Taxation" initiated by Wolfgang Kessler

Individual evidence

1. ↑ The interest barrier in a legal comparison: Problem areas and possible solutions ( Memento of the original from August 8, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
2. ↑ Proof of publication ( Memento of the original from July 18, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.