Tax policies fuel inequality—Oxfam

Oxfam has said Malawi’s tax structural policy choices are made for the richest and favours the most powerful.

The international charity focusing on alleviation of global poverty, says instead of redistributing wealth by collecting more from corporate individuals, the country’s tax system overburdens the poor thereby increasing inequalities.

This is the key message in Oxfam’s international report ‘Inequality Kills’ released early this month.

The report notes that the widening economic, gender, and racial inequalities are tearing the world apart, especially in the least developed countries such as Malawi.

The report adds that the Covid-19 pandemic has revealed openly both the motive of greed and the opportunity by political and economic means, by which extreme inequality has become an instrument of economic violence.

Oxfam in Malawi’s Just Economies programme and policy manager Mathias Kafunda in an interview yesterday challenged government to radically redesign its economies through progressive taxation.

He said: “Tax generation and the provision of public services is one of the main ways of redistributing wealth from the rich to the poor. However, our tax structural policy choices are made for the richest and most powerful people.

“Government, therefore, can radically redesign its economies to be centered on equality. Through this, we can claw back extreme wealth through progressive taxation, and invest in powerful, proven inequality-busting public measures, and boldly shift power in the economy and society.”

The report suggests redesigning of the economy to be centered on equality, through progressive taxation, investment in powerful, proven inequality-busting public measures, and boldly shift power in the economy and society.

Reads the report in part: “All governments should immediately tax the gains made by the super-rich during this pandemic period, to claw back these resources and deploy them instead in helping the world.”