One of the byproducts of the era of big tech has been extreme inequality. While almost all of the major players – Google, Meta, Apple, Amazon, or Microsoft – are all based in the US, the Global South countries constitute a major share of their market. So, even though the digital giants may not have a lot of physical footprint in terms of their establishment in the country where they operate, these countries are where they generate a major share of their profits. As such, why should the country of residence pocket all the taxes? Are they not robbing us of our legitimate taxes? These are questions that have been raised in recent years in multilateral platforms globally. Similarly, by simply offshoring their profits to a sister company housed in a low-tax jurisdiction, they are able to avoid paying legitimate taxes in the developing countries. If we truly are a credible voice of the Global South, as the government claims, one wonders as to why such issues of gross inequities and open loot of our legitimate share never become central issues in the multilateral mega events we host? The upcoming BRICS summit being no different.Let’s not forget that the age of Artificial Intelligence is only going to further widen the gap as has been the warnings from several credible corners. Even the UN Secretary General has voiced apprehensions as to whether AI will aid in concentrating resources in the hands of a few. Developing countries have long relied on taxing labour and wages, and in India, income tax has now overtaken corporate tax collections for the first time. As AI replaces jobs, that labour tax base will keep shrinking, even as profits concentrate in a handful of AI firms that pay almost nothing. Palantir, the AI firm that has been aiding Israel in its genocide in Gaza, posted a 93% revenue jump in early 2025 with a global effective tax rate of just 1.4%. Some countries are looking for new answers. South Korea, for instance, has floated a “national dividend,” taxing AI-driven corporate profits to fund basic income, pensions, and support for workers displaced by automation.But what about global tax justice? There are three big questions at the heart of today’s global tax fight: where should companies pay tax? Where they’re headquartered, or where they actually earn money? How do we stop them from hiding profits in tax havens? And who gets to decide the rules? A rich-countries’ club like the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), or every country as equals? The OECD, after years of foot-dragging, has failed to yield anything substantive. Even the 15% global minimum corporate tax that it patted its own back for has been sidestepped by the US, as it has browbeaten others into not taxing its multi-national companies. It’s referred to as the “side-by-side” package. Frustrated with the OECD, developing countries pushed tax talks to the UN, where every country gets an equal vote instead of rich nations calling the shots. The US walked out of it on day one, in February 2025, refusing to even participate. Some, in fact, thought it was “good riddance”. What has been the role of BRICS in all of this? Well, it has backed the UN process politically, welcoming it as a more democratic site. At the 17th BRICS Summit in Rio de Janeiro, July 2025, the leaders’ declaration welcomed a BRICS Joint Statement in support of the United Nations Framework Convention on International Tax Cooperation, issued by the BRICS Finance Ministers. But at the same time, unlike the African nations, it has not really proactively committed to or pushed any specific fix like unitary taxation or a global wealth tax. India’s own position has been blatantly contradictory. It champions fair global taxation at the UN, arguing that source countries deserve their due. And yet at home it scrapped its own “Google tax” 2024-25 in the face of US tariff threat. And then handed foreign cloud and AI companies a 21-year tax holiday running from 2026 to 2047! This isn’t just declining to tax foreign digital revenue, it’s actively subsidising it via forgone tax on AI infrastructure investment. Also read: The Lethal Policy Choice of Inequality: How India’s Super Rich Rule Over DemocracyIn an Age of Inequalities, we cannot afford to have such self-defeating and lukewarm approaches. What we need is a fundamental challenge to a system that thrives on extraction and exploitation at one end and concentration at the other. The Independent Commission for the Reform of International Corporate Taxation, led by economists including Joseph Stiglitz, Thomas Piketty, and Gabriel Zucman, has proposed taxing multinationals as one single global company so that they cannot park their wealth at tax havens. They have proposed splitting profits by where real economic activity happens instead of the home country of MNCs, alongside a 25% global minimum tax and a 2% wealth tax on billionaires and the ultra-rich! The apathy we see in our approach to global inequalities and multinational corporations also reflects in our approach towards the question of inequality at home and the hyper concentration of wealth in the hands of high net worth individuals. Among the BRICS countries, in India we are witnessing one of the fastest rate of concentration. The BRICS Wealth Report 2024 revealed that between 2013-2023, private wealth grew by a remarkable 92% in China, followed by India in the BRICS High-Net-Worth Individual ranking, with 326,400 millionaires, including over 1,000 centimillionaires and 120 billionaires, and wealth growth soaring by 85%. The Wealth Tracker India 2026 underlined how the super rich in India are amassing wealth at an astronomical rate while the other India is struggling with stagnating incomes, rising debt, and joblessness. UAE and Saudi Arabia also saw upward trend. Among the original members, most however, have seen a decline in their millionaire populations since 2013, ranging from a drop of 20% in South Africa, a decline of 28% in Brazil and that of 24% in Russia. The report also predicted that when it comes to private wealth growth projections, India leads the BRICS pack with a forecast 110% increase in wealth per capita by 2033. Also, it’s worth noting both Brazil and South Africa have been far more vocal than India on the question of wealth concentration. In Brazil, Lula’s government pushed a 2% global minimum tax on billionaires at the G20 in 2024. Even domestically, Brazil has more redistributive infrastructure already in place (Bolsa Família) even without a formal wealth tax. South Africa too, under Ramphosa, in the G20 2025, constituted the “Extraordinary Committee of Independent Experts on Global Inequality” chaired by Nobel laureate economist Joseph Stiglitz, that delivered the first-ever G20 report on global inequality in November 2025. The committee included Jayati Ghosh, Winnie Byanyima, Imraan Valodia, Adriana Abdenur, and Wanga Zembe-Mkabile. China, which in any case has a massive state presence, is also known to have been aggressively cracking down on billionaires, tech moguls, and high-income elites through sweeping regulatory curbs, and aggressive retroactive tax enforcement. Compared to several of these BRICS members, in India we have seen quite the opposite. We have seen wealth tax being abolished and corporate tax being slashed substantially in recent years and massive write offs and haircuts being allowed to big corporates. As the streets of Delhi are decked up with BRICS hoardings, and as we are (presumably) gearing up to hide our own gross inequities with green screens, it is imperative that we point at this void, this lukewarm approach or silence on addressing inequality. That’s what the People’s BRICS Delhi Declaration highlighted after the two day Dialogue Summit (August 21-22). It foregrounded the demand for “Progressive and redistributive taxation, including effective taxation of extreme wealth, high incomes, inheritance and corporate profits, alongside stronger international cooperation to curb tax avoidance, illicit financial flows and the use of tax havens.”Tackling inequality is not merely an economic choice. Because if we don’t do it, we will also corrode democracy and accountability. We must demand that the super-rich and the corporates be taxed such that we can spend more on health, on education, on social welfare, on climate adaptation, and public infrastructure. That’s one way of balancing the scales both globally and within. That’s also a way of foregrounding structural questions on equity and opportunity, instead of the rhetoric of hate and demagoguery that subsume all substantive questions of democracy.Anirban Bhattacharya writes on socio-economic issues, democratic rights and inequality and is associated with the Centre for Financial Accountability.This article is part of a series on BRICS and Global South cooperation curated by The Wire and the Centre for Financial Accountability (CFA). Read part one here.