Humanistische Stiftung

The Humanistische Stiftung is offering prize money totaling € 450,000 for the best drafts for an income-tax law. The winner of the first prize will receive € 125,000, the winner of the second prize € 100.000 and the winner of the third prize € 75,000. A total of € 100,000, € 25,000 each, will be awarded to the authors of four more drafts. A further € 50,000 will go to outstanding solutions to partial aspects.

The prize money will be awarded by a prize jury judging independently. The judges’ decisions will be final. Natural persons and legal persons of all kind and origin, as well as combinations of such persons, are eligible to enter the competition. Drafts must be submitted to the Humanistische Stiftung, Holzhausenstrasse 19, 60322 Frankfurt/Main by June 30, 2003 at the latest. Once an entry is submitted to the competition the right to exploit a winning text in any manner and free of cost passes to the Humanistische Stiftung.

Each draft should be divided up into a legal text, the first part, and an explanation of the individual provisions, the second part.

In its judging, the prize jury will observe the following criteria:

Clarity of language, succinctness and conciseness of presentation, acceptance of the proposed standards by the general public and the experts, and the feasibility of the draft as a law; furthermore:

Adherence to the principles of taxation according to achievement potential, uniformity of taxation, avoidance of the taxation of sham earnings, the practicability and feasibility of the taxation, its compatibility with overarching law in the European Community, avoidance of economically pointless incentives and the possibility of including undeclared sources of income in current taxation.
Modernization of the income-tax law – competition

Dear Sir/Madam,

As anyone who is familiar with the German income-tax law knows, the income-tax law contradicts the principles of just taxation on many counts. They know that it prevents the maintenance and growth of prosperity in our country and also that it can plunge many taxpayers into personal ruin. You are all familiar with the universal call for a better income-tax law; it has been heard repeatedly for decades. However, you also know that those who have been entrusted with modernizing the income-tax law for decades now have not been in a position to do this task justice. And unofficially those entrusted with the task admit more or less openly that they do not find themselves in a position to do this for any number of reasons. The objective of the attached competition is to increase the number of people involved in modernizing the income-tax law, possibly encouraging working parties to be formed, taking their members, for example, from different areas such as financial administration, economics, the universities or the professions that advise on taxation.

We are not seeking to organize the kind of competition that identifies and rewards the “best” of the tax reformers. Instead it is our objective to gain a broad understanding of where a consensus can be reached in our society, of what is considered meaningful in business and economic terms and simultaneously, of what is legally and administratively possible.

The Foundation also highly values outstanding individual solutions to partial aspects of the matter. Accordingly, it has raised the prize money offered from the original sum of € 400,000 to € 450,000 and has extended the competition accordingly.

Participation in the attached competition represents a service to our country involving a great deal of effort and personal commitment. If it arouses widespread interest, the competition can be of great benefit to the community. We therefore very much encourage you to participate.

The Foundation will not put together the prize jury until after June 30, 2003. In order to be able to estimate how much work will be involved in plenty of time we therefore request the participants in the competition let us know about this.

The wording of the competition and information about the Foundation are also available on the Internet at www.humanistische-stiftung.de.

We request that you make this letter and the attached competition available to any persons who come into question.

Please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any questions.

Yours faithfully,

Dr. Jehner

(This Text can be downloaded in a PDF Version here)