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Inequality, already extreme before COVID-19, has reached new levels. There is an urgent need for governments to implement highly progressive taxation measures that in turn must be used to invest in powerful and proven measures to reduce inequalities.

In response to the G20 communique, Oxfam says: ‘The G20 has failed to meet the huge challenges our world faces. They continue to stumble away from taking the bold actions necessary to tackle poverty, inequality, and climate change after an uninspiring and underwhelming Summit in India this weekend.” 

At the meeting of the European Council in Tallinn today France, Germany, Italy and Spain called for an agreement on new measures to tax tech giants, like Google and Amazon. Currently, disparate tax laws allow large companies to pay disproportionately low effective tax rates in the EU.

The international tax system is broken and unfair.  July’s Finance for Development Conference in Addis is the perfect time to ensure all parties agree to tackle this problem.

EU finance ministers failed to agree on a ‘digital services tax’ that would ensure big tech companies pay a minimum level of tax at a meeting today in Brussels. Instead, France and Germany have presented a watered-down new proposal to only tax online advertisements.

Today the European Parliament adopted the report by its Panama Papers inquiry committee and voted in favor of recommendations aimed at stopping corporate tax avoidance across the European Union. Oxfam welcomes the Parliament's call for EU member states to adopt the reforms needed to end corporate tax abuses.

In response to calls for a waiver of Trade and Intellectual Property Rules (TRIPS) for COVID-19 vaccines, which is backed by more than 100 mostly developing countries, being blocked again at World Trade Organisation talks by rich countries, Oxfam’s Health Policy Manager, Anna Marriott, said:“This is a massive missed opportunity to speed up and scale up the production of lifesaving vaccines worldwide by waiving the intellectual property barriers that prevent more qualified manufacturers joining the effort.

The coronavirus pandemic has swept across a world unprepared to fight it. Only one in six countries assessed for the CRI Index 2020 were spending enough on health, and in more than 100 countries at least one in three workers had no labour protection such as sick pay.

The COVID-19 pandemic has worsened the extreme inequality in Southern African Development Community countries, and pushed millions into poverty. Recovering from the pandemic, however, offers SADC governments a once-in-a-generation opportunity to do reduce inequality drastically and eliminate extreme poverty by 2030. 

Eight men own the same wealth as the 3.6 billion people who make up the poorest half of humanity, according to a new report published by Oxfam today to mark the annual meeting of political and business leaders in Davos.