Governments worldwide should adopt higher taxes and other policies that would reduce the number of billionaires by half by 2030 to make the world more equal, anti-poverty group Oxfam said in a report Monday.

The aid group made its plea as the Swiss ski resort of Davos hosts political leaders, CEOs and celebrities for the weeklong World Economic Forum (WEF) starting Monday.

Oxfam International has sought for a decade to highlight inequality at the conclave of political and business elites.

The report, which aims to provoke discussions on panels featuring corporate and government leaders this week, said the world has been beset with simultaneous crises, including climate change, the surging cost of living, Russia’s war in Ukraine and the COVID-19 pandemic; yet, the worlds richest have gotten richer and corporate profits are surging.

Over the past two years, the world’s superrich 1% has gained nearly twice as much wealth as the remaining 99% combined, Oxfam said. Meanwhile, at least 1.7 billion workers live in countries where inflation is outpacing their wage growth, even as billionaire fortunes are rising by $2.7 billion daily.

To combat these problems, Oxfam urged higher taxes on the rich, through a combination of measures, including one-time "solidarity" taxes and raising minimum rates for the wealthiest. The group noted that billionaire Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s actual tax rate from 2014 to 2018 was just over 3%.

The report titled "Survival of the Richest" said billionaires had doubled their wealth over the last 10 years, with the wealthiest 1% gaining 74 times more than the bottom 50%.

The very wealthy have grown richer amid the cost-of-living crisis sparked by the COVID-19 pandemic and soaring food and energy prices following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the report said.

Food and energy companies, it noted, had more than doubled their profits last year, calling for taxes at rates that progressively redistribute wealth and reduce extreme inequality.

Some governments have turned to taxing fossil fuel companies' windfall profits as Russia's war in Ukraine sent oil and natural gas prices soaring last year, squeezing household finances worldwide.

Oxfam wants the idea to go further to include big food corporations as a way to narrow the widening gap between the rich and poor. It said food companies making big profits should face windfall taxes.

"The number of billionaires is growing, and they're getting richer, and substantial food and energy companies are making excessive profits," said Gabriela Bucher, Oxfam International's executive director.

"What we're calling for is windfall taxes, not only on energy companies but also on food companies to end this crisis profiteering," Bucher told The Associated Press (AP) in an interview.

Oxfam's report said wealthy corporations are using the war as an excuse to pass on even more significant price hikes. Food and energy are among the industries dominated by a small number of players with effective oligopolies, and the lack of competition allows them to keep prices high, the group said.

At least one country has already acted. Portugal introduced a windfall tax on energy companies and major food retailers, including supermarket and hypermarket chains. It took effect at the start of January and will be in force for all of 2023.

The 33% tax is applied to profits at least 20% higher than the average of the previous four years. Revenue raised goes to welfare programs and to help small food retailers.

Oxfam said its analysis of 95 companies that made excess, or windfall profits, found that 84% of those profits were paid to shareholders while higher prices were passed on to consumers.

For starters, "the world should aim to halve the wealth and number of billionaires between now and 2030, both by increasing taxes on the top 1% and by adopting other billionaire-busting policies."

Such steps would bring billionaire wealth and numbers back to levels last seen in 2012.

"The eventual aim should be to go further and to abolish billionaires altogether, as part of a fairer, more rational distribution of the world's wealth," it said.

Oxfam said higher taxes on dividends and "one-off solidarity" wealth and windfall taxes should be introduced "to stop crisis profiteering."

It also called for a permanent tax increase on the wealthiest 1%, with a minimum 60% tax on their income from labor and capital.

Citing a report by the U.S. investigative news group ProPublica, Oxfam said many of the world's richest people paid hardly any taxes, with Tesla boss Musk facing a "true tax rate" of just 3.2% between 2014-2018 and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos paying less than 1%.

In stark comparison, a market trader in Uganda who works with Oxfam pays 40% of her profits in tax, the charity said.