



Welcome to the Chairs of Professor Dr Joachim Englisch and Professor Dr Marcel Krumm!
The Institute for Tax Law at the University of Münster was officially founded in 1934. On 12 April 1934, the Ministry for Science, Art and Education authorized Ottmar Bühler, who was the first holder of the chair, to use the term "Institut für Steuerrecht" (Institute for Tax Law) as the official name of what had formerly been known as "Seminar for Steuerrecht" (Seminar for Tax Law). Thus, the Institute for Tax Law is the oldest of its kind in Germany.
After Bühler retired, Friedrich Klein acted as Director from 1950 to 1974, before Paul Kirchhof, later Judge at the German Federal Constitutional Court, chaired the Institute from 1975 to 1981. In 1982, Dieter Birk was appointed Director and held the chair for almost 30 years.
Since 2011, Joachim Englisch has been Director of the Institute; since 2018, he has shared the co-directorship with Marcel Krumm.
Substantive rule of law calls for an equal distribution of the tax burden upon individual taxpayers. [...] The issues of tax justice are not transcendental; they need to be solved here, here and now.
Reforming the tax system may not be easy or popular in the short term, but it holds out the prospect of significant economic gains and hence the promise of higher living standards in the long term.






On June 24, Prof. Englisch delivered the keynote address at the annual conference of the Institute Finance and Taxation (IFSt) in Berlin, focusing on recent developments in European Court of Justice (ECJ) case law in the area of value-added tax. His analysis focused on the VAT implications of transfer pricing adjustments driven by income tax considerations, as well as conflicting rulings regarding the timing of input tax deductions. This was followed by a lively discussion both among the panelists and with the audience. The presentation will be published in the IFSt conference proceedings.


Professor Joachim Englisch will be offering an seminar on the topic
Influencing Behaviour through Taxation
during winter semester 2026/27 as part of the major in tax law. Detailed information may be found on the German website.
On 29th May 2026, Professor Joachim Englisch delivered a short presentation at a conference held in Rimini on “70 Years of Constitutional Protection in Tax Law.” In his presentation, he critically analyzed the evolving role of the ability-to-pay principle in the German Federal Constitutional Court’s case law over the past 15 years. The approximately 100 participants included primarily Italian tax judges as well as the Vice President of the Italian Constitutional Court responsible for tax cases.



