World's top 1% became richer by $40 trillion in 10 years, taxes on them at ‘historic lows’: Oxfam

Oxfam said that the world's richest one per cent increased their fortunes by a total of $42 trillion in the past ten years. Even though the rich of the world became richer and richer, taxes on them fell to "historic lows", it said, warning of "obscene levels" of inequality with the rest of the world "left to scrap for crumbs".

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Oxfam said that the $42 trillion figure was nearly 36 times more than the wealth accumulated by the poorer half of the world's population. Billionaires "have been paying a tax rate equivalent to less than 0.5 percent of their wealth" across the globe, it said. Nearly four out of five of the world's billionaires call a G20 nation home, it noted.

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Oxfam remarks come ahead of G20 summit in Brazil which has made international cooperation on taxing the super-rich a priority of its presidency. At this week's summit in Rio de Janeiro, G20 finance ministers will focus on levies on the ultra-wealthy and processes that can be used to prevent billionaires from dodging tax systems. The initiative involves determining methodologies to tax billionaires and other high-income earners, news agency AFP reported. The proposal will be debated at the with France, Spain, South Africa, Colombia and the African Union in favour although the United States has been firmly against the same.

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Oxfam called it a “real litmus test for G20 governments” as the NGO urged them to implement an annual net wealth tax of at least eight per cent on the "extreme wealth" of the super-rich.

"Momentum to increase taxes on the super-rich is undeniable," Oxfam International's head of inequality policy Max Lawson said. He added, “Do they have the political will to strike a global standard that puts the needs of the many before the greed of an elite few?”

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