Tag Archives: inequality

Spain and Brazil push global action to tax the super-rich and curb inequality

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Presented during the UN’s 4th International Conference on Financing for Development, taking place this week in Sevilla, the proposal highlights a growing problem: the richest individuals often contribute less to public finances than ordinary taxpayers, thanks to lower effective tax rates and legal loopholes.

“Our countries need more and more public revenues to meet their needs. Inequality is a problem everywhere, and the richest pay less than the middle class – even less than lower-income taxpayers,” said Spain’s Secretary of State for Finance Jesús Gascón, during a press conference at the conference venue, where temperatures have soared to record highs in recent days.

The two governments are calling on others to join a drive for a fairer, more progressive global tax system. They point to a stark reality: the wealthiest one per cent of the global population owns more than 95 per cent of humanity combined.

The Spanish Secretary of State for Finance Jesús Gascón (on screen) addresses a meeting at the Financing for Development conference in Sevilla, Spain.

Sharing knowledge, closing gaps

In today’s interconnected world, access to reliable data is essential. The initiative prioritises information sharing – between governments and tax authorities – to help expose gaps in tax systems, close loopholes, and combat evasion and avoidance.

Improving data quality and building national capacities for data analysis will help tax administrations identify where and how wealth is concentrated, how much is currently being paid, and what needs to change.

Though some progress has already been made, the countries say much more must be done and many more countries should come on board.

“There’s a real need to know who the beneficial owners are behind companies and legal structures used to conceal wealth,” said Mr. Gascón. The initiative also proposes technical cooperation, training in data analytics, and peer review mechanisms to strengthen national tax systems.

A global wealth registry?

Spain and Brazil are even considering steps toward a global wealth registry – acknowledging that this would take time, political will, and major national efforts.

But the aim is clear: more transparency, more accountability, and fairer contributions from the richest.

“We cannot tolerate the intensity of inequality, which has been increasing in recent years,” said Brazil’s Minister-Counsellor to the UN, José Gilberto Scandiucci denying that this was some kind of far-leftist agenda.

“This is a moderate initiative to confront a very radical reality.”

The proposal forms part of the Seville Platform for Action, which is turbocharging voluntary actions to help reach the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) – currently way off track for the 2030 deadline.

G20 highlights ‘high worth’ factor

It also follows the 2024 agreement by the G20 industrialised nations who met in Rio, Brazil, last year – the first international accord to commit to a joint tax agenda for high-net-worth individuals.

A three-month work plan is now being drawn up, with regular meetings planned to track progress. The goal: bring more countries, international organisations and civil society on board to push forward tax reforms targeting the ultra-rich.

“If we want to effectively tax the super-rich, fight inequality and make our tax systems fairer and more progressive, we need political will – and we need to act within our means,” Mr. Gascón added.

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Oxfam Asks India to Introduce Inheritance Tax

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The top 62 billionaries of the world own 50% of world wealth while in India, the top 57 billionaires own what 70% of the population owns, said an Oxfam study that was released on Monday, showcasing rising income inequality, which portends more conflicts and rise in crime worldwide. The London-based non-profit asked India to introduce inheritance tax to end the alarming inequality.

The report titled ‘An economy for the 99 per cent’ said the total global wealth has been calculated at $255.7 trillion, of which about $6.5 trillion was held by billionaires such as Bill Gates ($75 billion), Amancio Ortega ($67 billion) and Warren Buffett ($60.8 billion) among others. In India, it said 84 billionaires own wealth of $248 billion out of the total wealth of $3.1 trillion, led by Mukesh Ambani ($9.3 billion), Dilip Shanghvi ($16.7 billion) and Azim Premji ($15 billion). The total Indian wealth in the country stood at $3.1 trillion.

“Over the next 20 years, 500 people will hand over $2.1 trillion to their heirs, a sum larger than the GDP of India, a country of 1.3 billion people,” Oxfam said, magnifying the fact that the poorest half of the world has less wealth than had been previously thought.

It was critical that the richest 10% of the population in China, Indonesia, Laos, India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka have seen their share of income increase by more than 15% in the last two decades, while the poor have lost 15% of their income during the same period.

A top IT firm CEO in India earns 416 times higher the salary of a typical employee in his company and in terms of dividend too, the distribution of profits is hovering around 50% in India compared to more than 70% elsewhere, Oxfam said. It advised the Indian government to end wealth inequality, end poverty and introduce inheritance tax, increase the rate of wealth tax among others.

“Indian government must eliminate tax exemptions and not further reduce corporate tax rates. Governments must support companies that benefit their workers and society rather than just their shareholders,” Oxfam said in its report.

Demand for Coffee Can Create Rift with Poorer Nations: Study

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The explosion in worldwide coffee consumption in the past two decades has generally not benefitted farmers of coffee beans in poorer nations along the equator, said a new study.

A University of Kansas (KU) researcher studying trade and globalization has found that the shift to “technified” coffee production in the 1970s and 1980s has created harsher economic and ecological consequences for heavy coffee-producing nations, such as Honduras, Colombia, Guatemala, Brazil, Vietnam and Ethiopia.

“Historically, coffee has been exploited by the West in various ways, because it’s consumed in rich countries, and grown in poor ones,” said Alexander Myers, a KU doctoral candidate in sociology.

Myers will present his study, “Trading in Crisis: Coffee, Ecological Rift, and Ecologically Unequal Exchange,” at the 110th Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association (ASA). The paper examines how the shift to technified coffee for mass production and to meet greater demand hurt peasant farmers of those countries and had a major ecological influence there, especially with the amount of water required for the crops.

Myers said the shift to technified coffee production changed the process to look more like traditional large wheat or soybean farms in the United States as opposed to allowing coffee plants to grow in smaller shaded areas. The latter process used much less water, for example, and it allowed farmers to diversify their crops and use their land to plant other crops as well.

Technified production requires farmers to exclusively grow coffee.”Especially these peasant farmers who maybe have a small plot of land, they rely almost exclusively on coffee sales to sustain themselves,” Myers said.

Major drops in commodities prices of coffee beans to around $0.50 per pound in 2001 nearly wiped out economies of those nations, for example.”That really hit the famers hard, and it caused a lot of these family farms that have historically relied on coffee to keep themselves afloat,” Myers said.

The technification of coffee production also required a new type of coffee bean to grow effectively, but the process also required much more water to produce. Some ecological researchers have estimated the average cup of coffee takes 140 liters of water to grow.”It’s very taxing environmentally,” Myers said.

The fair trade movement in the past two decades has helped to offset somewhat both the economic and ecological changes, especially for poorer farmers in developing countries. Myers said such movements could help raise awareness especially among coffee drinkers in Western nations.

“What we do matters. The choices that we make, the products that we buy have an impact on somebody,” he said. “Sometimes it’s a good impact. Sometimes it’s negligible or negative. But they do have impacts, so just trying to keep that in mind is important, especially in researching what is behind these consumption choices.”