Survival of the richest: How we must tax the super-rich now to fight inequality
This briefing paper highlights how taxing the super-rich is crucial in fighting inequality and addressing the multiple crises we are currently facing. The report provides practical solutions to raise taxes, while showcasing how decreasing economic inequality leads to decreasing gender, race, and colonial inequality.
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OVERVIEW
The report highlights the current unprecedented moment of multiple crises. While the very richest have become dramatically richer, poverty has hit a 25-year high. Taxing the rich is crucial to addressing this and reducing economic, racial, gender, and colonial inequalities.
The report recommends introducing one-off solidarity wealth taxes and corporate windfall taxes and increasing taxes on dividend payouts. Permanent increases in minimum taxes on the richest 1% to 60% of their income from both labour and capital are also recommended. Taxing the wealth of the super-rich at high rates is suggested to reduce extreme wealth and lower power concentration and inequality. Revenues from these taxes can increase spending on sectors like healthcare, education, food security, and fund transitioning towards a low-carbon world.
Transparency and citizen participation in the use of public resources is important to ensure trustworthy and accountable institutions in using taxes for the public interest. Wealth taxes are effectively green taxation, as they reduce carbon consumption by the rich. Steeply higher rates of taxation on investing in polluting industries could also deter billionaires from investing in them.
The report suggests adopting a UN Tax Convention, including an intergovernmental tax body with universal participation, to redistribute corporate profits more fairly between high- and low-income countries and ensure the meaningful participation of low-income countries in international tax negotiations.
In conclusion, Oxfam calls on governments and international institutions to urgently implement the five sets of recommendations provided for reducing inequality and contributing to a fairer and more sustainable future for people and the planet. These recommendations include introducing one-off solidarity wealth taxes and windfall taxes, stopping crisis profiteering, permanently increasing taxes on the richest 1%, taxing the wealth of the super-rich, and using revenues from these taxes to increase government spending on inequality-busting sectors.
