Oxfam

Oxfam’s annual report, this year entitled “Public Good or Private Wealth,” has calculated that last year a mere 26 people owned more than the 3.8 billion people who make up […]

In a report published on Tuesday, Oxfam has assessed the tax collecting credentials of the 92 countries currently being assessed by the EU, as well as all 28 EU member states, which are not part of the EU’s review. Claiming to use the same criteria as the EU, namely the examination of countries’ tax transparency systems and tax rates, the Oxfam report claims that a proper blacklist would have four EU member states – Ireland, Luxembourg, Malta and the Netherlands – on it.

The EU’s fight against tax evasion is far from over. After a series of tax evasion scandals concerning European countries and companies in recent years, the NGO Oxfam on Monday published a 52-page report, which estimates €25 billion of banker money ended up in tax havens in 2015.

It means fewer funds are going into national budgets to pay for things like health care and education. The report probed Europe’s 20 largest banks and found that Luxembourg remains one of their most profitable tax havens.

Eight men now own the same amount of wealth as the poorest half of the world. A top corporate CEO earns as much in a year as 10,000 garment factory workers in Bangladesh. And the world’s 10 biggest corporations together have revenue greater than the 180 poorest countries combined, according to a study published Sunday by Oxfam.

The charity’s report, "An economy for the 99%", was released as global leaders and the business elite traveled to Davos, Switzerland, for the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum; it suggests the wealth gap is wider than ever, with new data for China and India indicating that the poorest half of the world owns less than previously estimated.