France said it was in favor. The Brazilian presidency of the G20 wants to implement an international tax affecting the wealthiest households, after the agreements already obtained on the taxation of digital giants and multinationals.
“Without improved international cooperation, those at the top will continue to find ways to avoid existing tax systems,” Brazilian Finance Minister Fernando Haddad, whose country chairs this year’s G20, said Wednesday. during a press conference organized during the IMF and World Bank meetings.
He called in particular for more transparency and an exchange of information between states. “Inequalities are increasing and sustainable development goals risk not being achieved. For these reasons, I called for a new globalization 2.0 at the G20 meeting. It is in this context that international cooperation on taxation takes place,” he further underlined.
Nearly 250 billion dollars
Brazil, led by left-wing President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, has made the issue of taxing the richest one of the main topics of its G20 presidency. At the global level, generating additional revenue is all the more necessary as “we are facing a global social and environmental crisis,” added the minister.
This taxation is “fairly easy to implement, from a technical point of view. Especially since the democratic demand for this type of taxation is overwhelming. From a practical point of view, it is very simple and we see how to do it quickly,” underlined French economist Gabriel Zucman, who defends a 2% annual tax on the wealth of the 3,000 richest people, during a press conference.
Such a tax would bring in nearly $250 billion, according to a report published Tuesday by the NGO Global Citizen, which cites this tax among the six potential sources of revenue for states to finance their investments in the climate transition. The wealth of the richest people has collectively increased by $2.7 billion per day since 2020, and they emit on average a million times more carbon dioxide than an average person, details the NGO.
Support from France
“This proposal has the support of the G20 presidency”, but also that “of the French government and many European countries, and I think it is a very good starting point”, assured the French Minister of the Economy and Finance, Bruno Le Maire, during a joint press conference with his Brazilian counterpart. American President Joe Biden, too, pleaded before Congress in March to tax billionaires.
More than 3,000 billion dollars are currently needed, annually, to face the challenges of global warming, the Managing Director of the IMF, Kristalina Georgieva, said earlier.