Wealth largely absent from IMF tax guidance, benefiting the rich

Only 3 percent of the more than 1,000 tax recommendations made by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to governments in recent years focus on taxing wealth and income from wealth, new analysis by Oxfam reveals ahead of the IMF and World Bank Spring Meetings in Washington, D.C.

Oxfam examined the IMF’s tax advice to 125 countries between 2022 and 2024. Despite the rapid growth of extreme wealth ―billionaire wealth has surged by 81 percent since 2020― just 30 of 1,049 tax recommendations focus on net wealth taxes and the taxation of income from wealth, namely capital gains.

“As billionaire fortunes grow at extraordinary speed, the IMF’s silence on taxing extreme wealth is increasingly untenable,” said Kate Donald, Head of Oxfam International’s Washington DC Office. “The Fund is reinforcing a system in which ordinary people —already strangled by rising prices— are forced to shoulder the brunt of taxes. Meanwhile, vast concentrations of obscene wealth remain largely untaxed. Serious fiscal reform should start with those most able to contribute.”

Oxfam’s analysis exposes two striking discrepancies in IMF guidance depending on a country’s income level.

First, 52 percent of tax advice to high-income countries was progressive, while 59 percent of tax advice to low- and lower-middle-income countries was regressive. A progressive tax system ensures those who have higher income and more wealth pay proportionally more taxes than those who have less. Progressive tax measures like net wealth and capital gains taxes were rarely recommended, and when they were, advice was concentrated in high-income contexts. 

• IMF tax advice to Canada and the United States was overwhelmingly progressive, while advice to South Asia was by far the most regressive, followed by Latin America and the Caribbean, and sub-Saharan Africa. India received the highest number of regressive recommendations.
• In the past 25 years, the gap between the richest 1 percent and the poorest 50 percent has grown in twice as many low- and middle-income countries that received mostly regressive IMF tax advice (25 percent) than in those that received mostly progressive advice (11 percent).

Second, while the IMF publicly acknowledges that tax policy is a critical tool for addressing inequality, it links its tax advice to inequality far more often for high-income countries (34 percent) than low- and lower-middle-income countries (8 percent). Nearly 90 percent of low- and lower-middle-income countries have medium or high inequality. 

• Chile, with one of the highest levels of income inequality, was advised to raise tax rates on low- and middle-income brackets while leaving rates on top income brackets untouched.
• Nigeria, where nearly one-third of the population lives in poverty —the highest rate in Africa—was advised to increase value-added taxes, which disproportionately affect the poor.
• Hungary was advised against implementing a windfall profit tax on energy companies, even though the IMF had publicly supported such taxes and the EU had agreed to implement them across member states.

"The IMF is operating with a troubling double standard that calls into question the evenhandedness it holds as a core principle. It offers mostly progressive tax advice to rich countries, yet its guidance for the rest of the world remains largely regressive. The Fund must provide equally progressive tax advice to all members —or admit its commitment to tackling inequality is merely rhetorical," said Donald.

Oxfam’s analysis also found that 10 percent of the IMF’s recommended tax reforms address gender inequality, and most of these references amount to just a few sentences. Overall, more than 90 percent of all IMF tax guidance focuses on tweaking existing measures.

In the context of the unlawful attacks on Iran by Israel and the United States, and Iran’s response, tax policy remains a critical tool for mitigating the impact of surging energy prices, which drive up costs for transport, food, and basic commodities, disproportionately affecting lower-income households. A windfall profits tax on energy corporations, which are poised to earn substantially higher profits, should be systematically included in IMF tax guidance. Oxfam estimates that 45 energy corporations made on average $237 billion a year in windfall profits in 2021 and 2022.  

Oxfam urges the IMF to seize the opportunity presented by its ongoing comprehensive review to fundamentally reform how tax policy is integrated into its economic surveillance. Specifically, the IMF must:
 

• Systematically place inequality at the heart of all fiscal advice, defaulting to revenue-raising policies that enhance the progressivity of national tax systems. Discourage over-reliance on consumption taxes and other regressive measures that disproportionately burden low-income households.
• Conduct and publish rigorous distributional impact assessments of all tax and fiscal advice included in Article IV reports to ensure recommendations do not exacerbate inequality.
• Significantly broaden recommendations for taxing high-net-worth individuals and wealth, while actively supporting measures to curb corporate tax avoidance and harmful competition.
• Develop a centralized, user-friendly database to track and publicize the tax advice provided in Article IV reports.