EU governments are missing out on €286.5 billion in tax revenue a year - the equivalent of €33 million an hour - because of their failure to tax Europe’s richest fairly, according to the latest report by the NGO Oxfam, published on Thursday 11 April.
Europe’s richest 1% own almost half of all the continent’s financial wealth, including bank deposits, shares, bonds and loans. Since 2020, EU billionaires have increased their wealth by a third, reaching €1,900 billion last year. At the same time, 99% of the EU population has become poorer.
Oxfam supports the European citizens’ initiative for a European wealth tax (see EUROPE 13329/27). The money raised from this tax could finance almost 40% of the EU’s post-pandemic recovery fund, more than three times the EU’s aid budget over 7 years and more than half of the highest estimated annual global cost of climate crisis adaptation and mitigation in low- and middle-income countries.
Read the report: https://aeur.eu/f/bro (Original version in French by Anne Damiani)