When people think about tax avoidance, Luxembourg is one country that may spring to mind.

Certainly, with the ‘Luxleaks’ affair fresh in the memory, the Grand Duchy has the dubious distinction of being one of the few countries in the world to contribute its name to a large-scale tax avoidance scandal, the only other modern equivalent being Panama and its infamous Papers.

Indeed, it is strange that Luxembourg, in the heart of the EU in so many ways, not only geographically, but economically and politically, is a country that is so readily identified with tax avoidance in the minds of transparency and anti-tax-avoidance campaigners. Even stranger perhaps that the serving President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, who is leading the EU's charge against cross-border tax avoidance and base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS), was its leader or finance minister or, for a while, both, over the course of 20 years from the late 1990s.