Tax policy after the crisis: what measures should be taken for corporate taxation in Germany?

)In this article we numerically explore the development of corporate tax burdens for the case of Germany during the time period between 1990 and 2010. We set up a model-firm approach, which allows us to account separately for many complicated tax provisions, such as earning stripping rules or loss-carryovers, in great detail and hence provide a comprehensive analysis of the tax systems in Germany, which extends the scope of existing literature. Furthermore, we present an analysis of the impact of the global economic and financial crisis on the effective tax burden of companies and evaluate the short-term measures introduced by the German government to support economic activity. Although the global economic crisis has posed hard new questions, it also offers an opportunity to accelerate structural tax reforms and restart the discussion on the design of corporate taxation in Germany beyond short-term policy responses. Therefore, we finally outline proposals to reform corporate taxation in Germany.