Mannheim Corporation Tax Day (Mannheimer Unternehmenssteuertag): Group Taxation and Group Tax Planning

Some 110 participants attended this year’s Mannheim Corporation Tax Day (Mannheimer Unternehmenssteuertag) on June 21, 2012. The annual event is jointly organised by the Centre for European Economic Research (ZEW) and the University of Mannheim. Within the framework of the Mannheim Corporation Tax Day, prestigious presenters from the fields of science, industry, auditing, tax accountancy, and financial administration deal with current issues of national and international corporate taxation. In the focus of this year’s event were practice-related questions about tax structuring in groups active on an international level.

Prof. Dr. Christoph Spengel (University of Mannheim and ZEW) opened the event and welcomed the participants. In the first lecture, Prof. Dr. Andreas Oestreicher (Göttingen University) outlined the perspectives of group taxation in Germany and Europe. The next speaker, Axel Eigelshoven (Partner at Deloitte & Touche), presented the developments regarding group taxation at OECD level, especially concerning the concept and profit allocation in operating units as well as with transfer pricing. In the concluding lecture, Dr. Christian Kaeser (Global Head of Taxes at Siemens AG) presented the specific structuring potentials and risks which may occur, depending on the group’s organisation.

In addition to the lectures, workshops dealt with in-group transfer prices, undetected operating units within groups, and with cross-border mobility and undesired disjunctions. Within the workshops, the various planning approaches were discussed in-depth, controversial issues were debated on the basis of relevant case studies, and approaches to solving these problems were elaborated.