Law Matters: Corporate Tax Avoidance, The Rule of Law and Social and Economic Justice

The Law Matters Seminar Series gives you the opportunity to engage with the critical issues of the day in the field of law.

Our Law School Community encourages critical, innovative and forward-thinking and this series of lectures provides a space for students to broaden their views and discuss the issues that really matter. 

Corporate Tax Avoidance, The Rule of Law and Social and Economic Justice

Dr Osita Mba is a Barrister and Solicitor in Nigeria and a Solicitor Advocate in England and Wales. He is also a Chartered Tax Adviser and a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Taxation in the UK. 

Osita was a lawyer for Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs (HMRC) from 2007 to 2013. In 2014, he was awarded the Middlesex University UK Whistleblowing Award “in recognition of his part in exposing a tax settlement between HRMC and Goldman Sachs.” 

Osita’s academic research is primarily on the meaning of, and the antidote to, tax avoidance and tax evasion in law, to which he brings his wealth of professional experience and expertise in domestic and international laws. His doctoral research, entitled “Cheating the Public Revenue: The Nature and Meaning of ‘Tax Avoidance’ and ‘Tax Evasion’ in English Law”, establishes the meaning of the terms “tax avoidance” and “tax evasion” in law using a Common Law principle common to all jurisdictions. It challenges the dogma that “tax evasion is illegal but tax avoidance is legal”, which is accepted as an article of faith in domestic and international taxation, and argues that “tax avoidance” and “tax evasion” are different forms of the Common Law offence of cheating the public revenue, which corresponds to tax fraud in all jurisdictions. His postdoctoral research, entitled ‘Cheating the Revenue of Nations: The Meaning of International Tax Avoidance and Evasion and the Responsibility of the State Enablers in International Law’, applies the same innovative approach to international tax avoidance and evasion, which are distinguished by their reliance on the laws and institutions of foreign states, by expounding them in the context of the international law doctrine of State Responsibility under which a state is responsible for any violation of international law by institutions and persons acting under its direction or control and must make full reparation for any injury caused any other state. The research seeks to demonstrate that offshore tax evasion by wealthy individuals and offshore tax avoidance by multinational companies amount to international tax frauds in international law and that states that enable them (usually in the guise of “tax competition”) breach their obligations under international law and should make reparation to the states they cheat.

Osita works as a Tax Law Adviser to TaxWatch, which is a UK based not-for-profit organisation that promotes the sound administration of the law and compliance with the law, particularly tax law. Under TaxWatch’s Rule of Law Project, he develops and conducts strategic litigation such as public interest interventions in cases between HMRC and taxpayers and judicial reviews of HMRC’s decisions. He is presently conducting TaxWatch’s judicial review of HMRC’s recent settlement of a $1.1 billion tax avoidance dispute with General Electric.