“Historical” decision. The G20 countries, meeting for two days in Rio de Janeiro, pledged on Friday to “cooperate”. super rich to be more taxes are levied in the name of fighting inequalities, but without going so far as to agree on a global tax.
The Brazil of leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who heads the G20 this year, has been pushing the idea for months. create a minimum tax for the wealthiest. The proposal ultimately failed to reach consensus at a meeting of finance ministers from the European Union and the African Union, a group of 19 of the world’s biggest economies, but a compromise emerged to encourage everyone to tax them more.
“With full respect for fiscal sovereignty, we will seek to cooperate to ensure that the very wealthy are effectively taxed,” said a declaration on “international tax cooperation” published at the end of the case. The text emphasizes that “wealth and income inequality undermines economic growth and social cohesion and exacerbates social vulnerability” and advocates “effective, fair and progressive tax policies”.
“From a moral point of view, it is important that the twenty richest countries think that we have a problem, which is to impose progressive taxes on the poor and not on the rich,” said Brazil’s finance minister. Fernando Haddad during the closing press conference.
A decision welcomed by economists
Apart from Brazil, France, South Africa, Spain and the African Union supported international taxation of the super-rich. But The US has rejected international negotiations on the subject. If they want the richest to pay their share, they believe that taxation is primarily the business of each country.
Kristalina Georgiyeva, managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), who participated in Rio, welcomed the position of the G20 in favor of “fiscal justice” and considered the cooperation decision to tax the richest “timely and welcome”.
The author of the report on the subject at the request of Brazil, French economist Gabriel Zucman “For the first time in history, the G20 countries agree that the way we tax the super-rich needs to change.” The declaration published on Friday discusses the exchange of best practices and the design of anti-tax evasion mechanisms to initiate international cooperation on tax matters.
“Now is the time to go further,” said the American Nobel laureate in economics Joseph Stiglitz calls on heads of state and government to mandate agreed minimum standards by November.
Other “consensus”
“This is an important step for the G20, which for the first time recognizes the need to tax the super-rich,” according to Greenpeace, an NGO that described Friday’s consensus as “historic.” This meeting was supposed to be a preparation for the summit between the G20 heads of state and government to be held in Rio on November 18 and 19.
G20 members also welcomed the “consensus” on Wednesday on Lula’s launch of the Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty, stressing the need to tackle climate change and environmental crises.