G20 billionaire wealth tax plans face resistance

G20 finance ministers are meeting in Brazil on Monday and Tuesday to agree on a global tax on the world’s 3,300 richest individuals, which could raise up to $250 billion.

Brazil’s plan for a new tax on the world’s wealthiest billionaires is facing some last-minute opposition at a two-day meeting of G20 finance ministers in Rio de Janeiro.

In remarks made to reporters ahead of the meeting, Brazil’s Environment Minister Marina Silva said there were “some objections on issues related to the climate agenda, the financial agenda and especially the tax on the super-rich,” as she attempts to pull together a common declaration.

At a July meeting also held in Rio, all 20 countries’ leaders recognised that wealth and income inequalities undermine economic growth and social cohesion.

They agreed for the first time to “engage cooperatively to ensure that ultra-high-net-worth individuals are effectively taxed” – but that commitment still needs to be firmed up and translated into action.

Silva did not name which countries are now raising qualms, but there are reports that Argentina’s President Javier Milei is taking an increasingly hardline stance on the issue.

Faced with such a scenario, Brazil could adjust the wording of the 20-country joint communiqué, or sign it on behalf of 19 countries with a paragraph explaining the dissenting country’s position, sources close to negotiations told Euronews.

Argentina has already refused to sign a ministerial declaration on women’s empowerment at the G20, and withdrew on the third day of the COP29 climate summit in Baku, Azerbaijan.

Countries such as Spain, which alongside France and South Africa have been the main public supporters of Brazil’s proposal, are putting pressure on other leaders to show courage on the issue.

“There is this moment where you have to be brave and where you just have to do things that you are convinced are right,” Spain’s finance minister Carlos Cuerpo urged his counterparts during a visit to London on Monday.

“There is an element here of redistribution of wealth that, if we listen carefully to the results of many of the elections that have taken place over the last years, has been demanded by our citizens. So we have to somehow respond,” he added.

Cuerpo has previously stressed that the first step would be to create a database of the income and assets of individuals considered internationally to be ultra-rich.

The plans to tax the world’s 3,000 richest billionaires are based on a proposal made last year by French economist Gabriel Zucman, who argues that closing the loophole via a 2% wealth levy could raise as much as $250 billion (€230 billion).

Oxfam estimates that the top 1% in the G20 countries now account for 31% of total wealth, up from around a quarter (26%) two decades ago.

“Leaders at the Rio Summit can end the decades-long assault on taxation that’s been waged by the ultra-rich. Only then can we begin to heal the rifts of inequality tearing apart our societies,” Oxfam Brazil Executive Director Viviana Santiago said ahead of the meeting.