The world’s richest one percent increased their fortunes by a total of $42 trillion over the past decade, a new report from Oxfam has revealed ahead of a G20 summit in Brazil where taxing the super-rich tops the agenda.
Despite this windfall, taxes on the rich had plummeted to ‘historic lows’, the NGO added, warning of ‘obscene levels’ of inequality with the rest of the world ‘left to scrap for crumbs’.
Brazil has made international cooperation on taxing the super-rich a priority of its presidency of the G20, a group of countries representing 80 percent of the world’s GDP.
At this week’s summit in Rio de Janeiro, the group’s finance ministers are expected to make progress on ways to raise levies on the ultra-wealthy and prevent billionaires from dodging tax systems.
The initiative involves determining ways to tax billionaires and other high-income earners, and is set to be fiercely debated at the summit on Thursday and Friday.
Tesla boss Elon Musk – or another tech tycoon – could become a trillionaire within the decade, Oxfam has previously warned
France, Spain, South Africa, Colombia and the African Union in favour, but the United States firmly against.
Oxfam dubbed it a ‘real litmus test for G20 governments’, urging them to implement an annual net wealth tax of at least eight percent on the ‘extreme wealth’ of the super-rich.
‘Momentum to increase taxes on the super-rich is undeniable,’ said Oxfam International’s head of inequality policy, Max Lawson.
‘Do they have the political will to strike a global standard that puts the needs of the many before the greed of an elite few?’
Oxfam said that the $42 trillion figure was nearly 36 times more than the wealth accumulated by the poorer half of the world’s population.
Despite this, billionaires ‘have been paying a tax rate equivalent to less than 0.5 percent of their wealth’ across the globe, the NGO said.
Nearly four out of five of the world’s billionaires call a G20 nation home, Oxfam noted.
It comes after another report earlier this year stated that the world could soon have its first trillionaire within a decade as the gap between the uber-rich and the rest becomes ‘supercharged’.
World leaders, including Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, attend a task force meeting of the Global Alliance against Hunger and Poverty in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, July 24
Tesla boss Musk leads the pack among the mega rich but the aid charity said a contender could yet come from nowhere to be the first to amass a fortune of a thousand billion dollars.
Lisa Rutherford, from Oxfam, told DailyMail.com: ‘The important thing is not who would become the first trillionaire but rather that it’s even an actual possibility, a trillion dollars is an unimaginable amount of money, and it’s absolutely nothing to celebrate.
‘As of 2022, hundreds of millions of people around the world – including one in 10 people in the US – were living in poverty, so the fact that any one person – Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos or otherwise – could become a trillionaire while millions of people suffer is simply unacceptable.’
Top five wealthiest people in the world
1. Elon Musk – $241 billion
Elon Musk owns 74% of X, formerly Twitter – the social media platform he bought it for $44billion in late 2022
The South African businessman’s wealth is tied up in the success of Tesla, his electric car firm.
Musk also owns 74% of X, formerly Twitter – the social media platform he bought it for $44billion in late 2022.
In December, Forbes estimated that Musk’s stake in X is now worth nearly 70% less than he paid for it, based on investor Fidelity’s valuation of the company.
Musk also owns around 42% of Space X, and has stakes in brain implant company Neuralink and The Boring Company.
2. Jeff Bezos – $204 billion
Bezos owns retail giant Amazon as well as The Washington Post and Blue Origin
The American businessman is the chairman and founder of Amazon, which he launched out of his Seattle garage in 1994.
The retail giant is now considered a tech company because a lot of its profits are generated through its cloud computing service AWS.
Bezos also owns The Washington Post and Blue Origin, an aerospace company developing rockets.
The tycoon said in a 2022 interview with CNN that he plans to give away most of his wealth during his lifetime, though he did not give specific details.
3. Bernard Arnault – $187 billion
Bernard Arnault, 75, is the CEO of French luxury conglomerate LVMH
Arnault serves as the CEO and chair of the French luxury conglomerate LVMH which owns well-known brands including Louis Vuitton, Tiffany & Co, and Dom Pérignon.
But the majority of his fortune is driven by his 97.5 percent stake in Christian Dior, according to Bloomberg.
In 2022, the 75-year-old entrepreneur raised LMVH’s mandatory retirement age to 80 which gives him another five years in control.
His five children all work across LVHM and its brands.
4. Mark Zuckerberg – $165 billion
Mark Zuckerberg, 40, is among the youngest of the billionaire tech tycoons
The Facebook founder started the social media platform as a 19-year-old college student at Harvard in 2004.
Among the youngest of the tech tycoons, the 40-year-old took his business public in 2012.
The company took over Instagram, and Zuckerberg changed its name to Meta in 2021 to shift the its focus to the metaverse.
Zuckerberg owns 13 percent of Meta, and shares in the company almost tripled in value last year.
5. Bill Gates – $157 billion
Microsoft boss Bill Gates enjoyed a $24 billion increase in his wealth in 2023, bringing his net worth up to a whopping $128 billion
Microsoft boss Bill Gates enjoyed a $24 billion increase in his wealth in 2023, and is the wealthiest he’s ever been.
But he also went down to his lowest ranking on the billionaires list since 1992 in a sign of how tough the competition has become at the top of the pyramid.
An expensive divorce set the 68-year-old back, along with a $59 billion donation he made to charities.
According to Forbes, Gates was the world’s richest man for 18 out of 23 years between 1995 and 2017.
Source: Bloomberg Billionaires Index
Note: The list of billionaires can change daily as the ranking is based on stock valuations.