Germany's Hunt for Taxes Being Illegally Applied to the Past | Armstrong Economics

Germany's Hunt for Taxes Being Illegally Applied to the Past | Armstrong Economics: The Hunt for Taxes has now led to criminal charges for manipulating stock ownership to avoid the tax on dividends. There German Attorney General has filed criminal charges against a number of traders for the first time in what is called Cum-Ex transactions. The name seems a bit strange but it involves shifting the ownership of shares around between various people on the dividend record date (Latin: "cum") and without dividend taxes applying ("ex"). The German Federal Ministry of Finance has said that banks and other suspects have avoided taxes by more than five billion euros. These type of transactions have been going on since the 1970s. Honestly, the one you heard of was concerning the French. They would sell their shares to a Brit who would be exempt from the tax and then the following day buys them back splitting the tax savings. Now the Germans are licking their lips at how much money they can now fine banks for helping these type of transactions while they are threatening the traders with ten years imprisonment. Of course, there is no specific law against this practice. It has been a loophole for decades. This attempt to use the criminal proceedings in Germany is by no means a

explicita