It seems to be a rite of passage in the United States to complain about the high taxes we have to pay. No one likes looking at a chunk of their paycheck going to Uncle Sam each month. But compared to other countries how big is the tax burden in the United States?
It turns out, not so big. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development recently released new data on the tax burdens in 30 countries around the world. The United States ranked fourth from the bottom in tax revenue as a percentage of G.D.P., behind only Mexico, Turkey, and Korea.
Mexico’s tax burden is the lowest in the world, at just 21.1% of GDP. In the United States, the tax burden is 26.9% of GDP. The average across the 30 countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development is 35.2 percent of gross domestic product.
Not surprisingly, countries like Denmark and Sweden which have well known large safety nets for its citizens have the highest tax burden. Denmark clocked in at 48.3 percent of GDP while Sweden came in at 47.1 percent. Both of those numbers are more than twice Mexico’s tax burden.
While taxes always seem high, in fact they have fallen in recent years across the globe, thanks in large part to the worldwide economic crisis. Tax revenue as a percentage of GDP in 2008 fell half a percent from 2007. The OECD predicts that tax burdens around the world will continue to fall in 2009.