Philipp Georg Riehm, Research Associate at the MPI for Tax Law and Public Finance, and Jonathan Seebach, attorney at the U.S. law firm Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP, have received the 2026 IFA Congress Award from the International Fiscal Association for their article “From Germany with Love: Comparative Law Thoughts on the 40th Anniversary of Boulez v. Commissioner,” published in the Virginia Tax Review. The award will be officially presented in October 2026 during the IFA Congress in Melbourne.
The article was written during Riehm’s exchange term at New York University School of Law in the 2022/2023 academic year. It examines the famous 1984 decision Boulez v. Commissioner of the United States Tax Court, which remains one of the standard cases in American scholarship on international tax law and illustrates the tax classification of licence payments under double taxation treaties: Pierre Boulez, a composer based in Germany, was in a dispute with the U.S. tax authorities over the taxation of income from his record contract. While the U.S. tax authorities classified the income as self-employment income, the German tax authorities sought to classify it as royalty income.
The article considers the case from a comparative law perspective and reconstructs how the German tax authorities would likely have assessed the facts at the time. In doing so, the two legal scholars complement the discussion, which has hitherto been predominantly US-centred. They demonstrate that the differing tax classifications ultimately stem from differences in copyright law – particularly regarding the attribution of authorship – between Germany and the US, and not from a differing tax-law interpretation of the treaty. Under the 1954 German-US Double Taxation Agreement, these differences led to divergent classifications of the income and, ultimately, to double taxation.
The findings extend beyond the historical case and German-US relations. The article demonstrates, in general terms, how national intellectual property law can influence the interpretation of double taxation treaties, thereby highlighting a fundamental problem in the cross-border taxation of licence payments. The analysis provides points of reference for both academic discussion and for practice, as well as for the further development of international tax law.
Philipp Georg Riehm and Jonathan Seebach are alumni of the International Taxation Programme at NYU School of Law (class of 2022/2023). The work was supported by Professor H. David Rosenbloom (NYU School of Law) and Professor Fadi Shaheen (Rutgers Law School).
The International Fiscal Association (IFA) is an independent international organization founded in 1938 and headquartered in Rotterdam, dedicated to international and comparative tax law. Its goal is to promote scholarly exchange and the further development of tax law issues, as well as the financial and economic aspects of taxation.
Riehm, P. G. / Seebach, J.: From Germany with Love: Comparative Law Thoughts on the 40th Anniversary of Boulez v. Commissioner. In: Virginia Tax Review, 2025, Band 44, Heftnummer 3, S. 519 - 556.
July 2026