Maya Forstater

The problem is that developments via the back door lack legitimacy. Just look at our mutual neighbors who got convinced that illegitimate laws were being imposed on them by the EU....

Of course, that’s one moral aspiration- process legitimacy. I’m not saying abandon it to achieve your goal, just saying that the front door/back door argument has a particular political flavour.

And of course legitimacy is a fluid thing. Arguably, the int’l corporate tax system we have today was heavily “back-doored” in its historical inception and growth. But now it’s the standard.

What are these back and front doors? I'm not sure it's a very meaningful distinction

The back door in this case is requiring public info to name & shame companies into aligning profits w/location of workers and sales, without that being an outright requirement.

You sure it will just be "name and shame" as distinct from "raise an assessment on"?

I think so--public CBCR will serve the purpose of making companies wary of having a huge discrepancy between the location of income & the location of workers, sales or facilities, because of bad headlines. Which is maybe a good thing! But it's not the law.

I think ideally the back door leads to the front door: transparency => public pressure on business => demand from business for govts to align tax system outcomes with public expectations.