Dr. Chiara Balbinot, a former research assistant at the Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance, has received four academic awards for her PhD thesis.

She was awarded the Academic Prize of the Munich Chamber of Tax Consultants (Steuerberaterkammer München), the Academic Prize of the German Scientific Institute of Tax Consultants (DWS Institute), the Prize of the Esche Schümann Commichau Foundation and the Faculty Award of the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich.

In her dissertation “Beihilfeverbot und Rechtsformneutralität. Zugleich ein Beitrag zur Auslegung des Beihilfeverbots im Steuerrecht” Dr. Balbinot deals with the interplay between State aid law and tax neutrality and addresses the question of whether the prohibition of State aid under article 107(1) of the Treaty of the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU) also sets limits on the discretion of the national tax legislator to distinguish between legal forms. The work was supervised by Professor Wolfgang Schön, a director at the Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance, and published in 2018 by Verlag Dr. Otto Schmidt in the series “Rechtsordnung und Steuerwesen”.

Dr. Balbinot's work, which provides a comprehensive overview of the preconditions for the application of State aid in tax law, is not only of a high scientific standard, as reported by the jury of the Munich Chamber of Tax Consultants states. According to the jury board of the DWS Institute (Deutsches wissenschaftliches Institut der Steuerberater e.V./German Scientific Institute of Tax Consultants) it also lays a firm foundation for dealing with individual practical problems and thereby contributes to the further development of European competition law.

The Academic Prize of the Munich Chamber of Tax Consultants rewards outstanding scientific work with an endowment of €3,000.
The DWS Academic Prize, also endowed with €3,000, is awarded annually by the DWS Institute for graduate theses of young academics in the fields of tax law, business taxation or finance.
The Esche Schümann Commichau Foundation every year grants promotion prizes to graduates in the fields of law, auditing and tax consulting.
The Faculty of Law award of the LMU in Munich is granted by the Alumni Association for doctoral theses that have been assessed with “summa cum laude” by the first and by the second assessors as well as in the oral examination.