Charitable organizations: Global super-rich may hide $3.55 trillion in assets from tax authorities

The United Kingdom’s British newspaper The Guardian reported on April 1 that the international charity organization Oxfam estimates that the world’s super-rich may have hidden up to $3.55 trillion (24.4 trillion yuan) of wealth from tax authorities. Oxfam once again calls for the imposition of a wealth tax and urges governments around the world to plug tax loopholes.

Oxfam, based on academic findings such as those from French economist Gabriel Zucman and the European Union Tax Observatory, among others, says that current available estimates show that the total amount of wealth held offshore has risen significantly—reaching $13.25 trillion (about 91.05 trillion yuan) in 2023.

Since the introduction of a new tax information exchange regime in 2016, the proportion of wealth concealed from tax authorities has fallen substantially. However, Oxfam estimates that about $3.55 trillion in wealth is still being sheltered from tax, an amount that exceeds 3% of global GDP, surpasses France’s GDP, and is more than twice the combined GDP of 44 of the world’s least developed countries.

Previous research estimated that 80% (that is, more than $2.84 trillion) of this wealth is likely held by the world’s richest 0.1% of households. This means that the total amount of untaxed assets held by this extremely small group is equivalent to the total wealth of the poorest half of the world’s population (about 4.1 billion people).

Within this extremely small group, the top 0.01% of super-rich individuals hold about half of that (about $1.77 trillion).

Oxfam’s tax issues lead, Christian Hallum, said: “This is not just about clever accounting—it’s about power and impunity. When millionaires and billionaires stash trillions of dollars in offshore tax havens, they place themselves above the obligations that bind other members of society.”

Oxfam calls for the introduction of a global progressive wealth tax and hopes to negotiate, through the United Nations, a tax cooperation framework. The organization also calls for including countries of the Global South in the “Common Reporting Standard,” which allows information exchange between different jurisdictions.