Maya Forstater

Why “following the law“? CumEx was illegal (at least in Germany it was) from the very beginning (which is the 70s). It was an institutional loophole, but not a legal one.

1) I think we have yet to ascertain the extent of illegality. 2) Because it’s been a consistent mantra in these types of scandal contexts

True on 2). But on 1): there is exactly one person in GER who's still convinced that it's legal - Hanno Berger. And he is so convinced that he hides in Switzerland since years. It's illegal.

Arguably, you could say the same thing about previous scandals (hence my original tweet): the “rest of the world” (slight exaggeration) were adamant revelations showed illegality, but those involved held firm on the #taxmantra nonetheless.

Can you give an example of what you are thinking of @phdskat ? In the cases I can think of where #taxmantra used it has been because the controversies were about legal tax practices, not fraud as in this case.

Erm.. well, yeah if you define away my point, then I am wrong :) For me, that's not how I would define the tax mantra here - I wouldn't confine it to the specific situation where corporations are accused of immorality.