A new and updated report on Tax Revenues has been published from OECD.
Some good news: taxes are decreasing a bit (“driven downward by declining economic activity and tax cuts”), in average; but these good news are not consistent across the world though, and 8 countries in Western Europe are above 40%:
- Denmark has the highest tax burden, closely followed by Sweden. The Danish tax burden was 48.2% in 2009, closely followed by Sweden at 46.4%.
- Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Italy and Norway also have tax burdens over 40%.
- Mexico, with a 17.5% tax to GDP ratio, and Chile, with 18.2%, have the lowest tax to GDP ratios amongst OECD countries, followed by the U.S. 24.0% and Turkey 24.6%.
- The tax burden declined more than 5 percentage points between 2007 and 2009 in Spain from 37.3% to 30.7%, Iceland from 40.6% to 34.1%, and Chile from 24.0% to 18.2%.
- Greece, Ireland, New Zealand and the United States showed declines of 3-4 percentage points from 2007 – 2009.
Definitely, taxes are not the same for everyone!
