Would you like to read – from begin to end – a 18 page pounderous law draft titled “Law for introducing a duty to report cross-border tax structuring”? The members of the German Bundestag apparently didn’t. After all, nothing seemed wrong with a duty to report cum-ex schemes. So the new law, proposed by finance minister Olaf Scholz, passed legislation on December 12, 2019 without much discussion. Only afterwards its real content, hidden on page 15, became public. It caused incredulity and turmoil among traders and investors. This article deals with the new bizarre German ‘trader tax’, and with ways to step around it. Continue reading “The Scholz Brake: Fixing Germany’s New 1000% Trader Tax”