Experts discussed the role of taxation in combating inequality, to coincide with the publication of a report by the NGO Oxfam on the taxation of large fortunes, on Tuesday 14 October.
The report revealed that over 80% of total tax revenues in EU countries are mainly paid by ordinary European citizens, compared with 9% by businesses and just 0.4% by wealth taxes. The combined wealth of EU billionaires increased by more than €400 billion in the first half of 2025, the equivalent of more than €2 billion a day. In 2025, the EU will have almost 500 billionaires, 39 more than in 2024.
Benjamin Angel, Director of Direct Taxation, Tax Coordination, Economic Analysis and Evaluation at the European Commission’s DG TAXUD, pointed out that inequality is not solved by progressive taxation alone. Inequality is measured by the Gini index, with zero representing perfect equality and one hundred representing perfect inequality. While the EU as a whole stands at 29, the lowest-ranked country is Spain, with a coefficient of 72, and the highest is Slovakia, with 21. Yet it was Spain that introduced a progressive system.
“So it’s important to pay attention as you do on the progressivity of the tax system but it must not distract from the key question which is what are member states doing with the resources they collect”, he stressed. “You can raise resources in a progressive way and spend it in a very regressive way”.
One of the avenues he mentioned for reducing inequalities is to gain a better understanding of the beneficial owners, particularly in real estate. “That is important because those who conceal wealth do it differently than in the past”, he said. He added that discussions on this subject were underway at the OECD.
Sarah Kuypers, researcher and guest professor at the University of Antwerp, spoke about the progressive nature of inheritance tax and capital gains tax.
Read the report: https://aeur.eu/f/iza (Original version in French by Anne Damiani)