G20 Leaders Must Listen to Their People and Agree to Tax the Super Rich – Global Issues
[ad_1]
NEW DELHI, Aug 06 (IPS) – Amitabh Behar is the Executive Director of Oxfam international We live in a world with many problems of inequality, climate degradation and conflict. Billions of people in the world are facing great difficulties. All governments, too, are virtually bankrupt, with extremely high debt levels forcing them to resort to brutal and unpopular cuts and tax increases for ordinary people. 3.3 billion people live in countries that spend more on debt payments than on education or health.
For the first time in 25 years, we have seen extreme wealth and extreme poverty grow simultaneously. The five richest people in the world have doubled their wealth since 2020 and five billion people have been made the poorest. In his 2023 SDG progress report, the United Nations Secretary-General announced that the sustainable development goal (SDG) tracking inequality is one of the most underperforming.
Taxation is one of the most important ways for governments to reduce economic inequality and generate revenue for governments to implement policies that reduce inequality. Historically, taxation of the very rich has helped create more equal societies and prevented an extreme gap from developing between the haves and have-nots.
However, in the decades before the pandemic, the tax rate steadily declined. The super rich and corporations have been favored with lower tax laws, while the tax rate for billions of ordinary people has increased.
Billionaires pay an estimated 0.5% tax on their wealth, half of what teachers or nurses pay. Meanwhile, the wealth of billionaires has been increasing at an annual rate of 7% for the past four decades – much faster than the wealth of ordinary people.
The call for a tax hike on the super rich is growing. For the first time in its history, in June, G7 leaders pledged to work together to raise the tax rate.
Under the Brazilian G20 Presidency in July, G20 Finance Ministers committed for the first time to cooperate on taxing the super-rich. Oxfam strongly supports G20 President Brazil’s initiative to set a global level of taxation on the super-rich.
At the G20 summit in November of this year, leaders need to go beyond their finance ministers and support concrete cooperation: agree on a new global agreement to tax the super-rich at a rate high enough to close the gap between them and the rest of the rich. we. Political leaders are waking up to this very popular policy; even rich people pay high taxes.
Nearly three-quarters of billionaires in G20 countries support higher wealth taxes, and leading figures such as Abigail Disney have come out in support of a global effort to tax the super-rich.
Higher taxation of the world’s richest people is not the only answer to the problem of inequality, but it is an important part of it. A federal wealth tax and marginal taxes can raise funds that can be directed to the provision of public goods. It is possible to make these continuous changes.
Italy was one of the first countries to impose a tax, and after WW2 the French government taxed most wartime wealth at 100%. The same level of ambition is needed today.
In addition, governments should permanently increase taxes on the richest 1%, for example up to at least 60% of income from workers and capital, at high rates for billionaires and billionaires. They should especially raise taxes on capital gains, which are subject to lower tax rates than other types of income.
A permanent wealth tax that rebalances capital and labor taxation would greatly reduce inequality, as well as address the disproportionate political power and enormous carbon emissions of the super-rich.
We need to see the wealth of the richest 1% taxed at rates high enough to significantly reduce the numbers and wealth of the richest and redistribute these resources.
This includes using inheritance taxes, property and land taxes, and capital gains taxes. Half of the world’s billionaires live in countries with no direct interest inheritance tax. They will pass on a $5 trillion tax-free wealth to their heirs—more than Africa’s GDP—from the next generation of aristocracy.
Above all, we want to see a change in thinking from governments. To think that the same thing—more billionaire wealth, and deeper into the cost-of-survival crisis—is the explanation for more madness and suffering for billions of people. We need to listen to the evidence, but also look to history, and what ordinary people around the world call it.
Closing tax loopholes and ensuring the super-rich pay their fair share will reduce inequality and raise billions of dollars urgently needed to stop climate change and invest in fairer societies for all.
It would put people and the planet before the needs of the wealthy few. The time has come for governments to stop decades of failed ideas and wealthy elite influence, and do the right thing: tax the super rich.
© Inter Press Service (2024) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service
[ad_2]
Source link
