Is tax avoidance illegal?
By Bruce Chooma It’s Monday 9 th November, 2015 on a bright day at Wits University in Johannesburg, South Africa. The university is full of activity as it host the2015 Power Reporting Conference on investigative reporting in Africa. I decided to attend an insightful lecture on how companies evade paying taxes. The lecture was delivered by John Christensen Director of the Tax Justice Network- an expert-led network that leads global efforts to curb tax havens. John is a trained forensic investigator and economist. I have argued during media interviews in Zambia that the award of tax holidays by the Zambian government to foreign investors was a bad policy and was not in any way a means of reducing the cost of doing business and providing incentives for Foreign Direct Investment (FDI). I was happy to hear John support this view as he began his lecture. In fact he provided evidence from various parts of the world to prove that lower taxes do not attract investment. Action Aid re