Income tax rates tell only part of the story. A country's total tax burden also includes social security contributions, VAT or sales taxes, corporate tax, property tax and excise duties. This guide uses two official OECD datasets that answer two different questions, and keeps them separate.
The first is tax revenue as a percentage of GDP (OECD Revenue Statistics 2025, published 9 December 2025), which measures how much of a country's economy the government collects in all taxes. The second is the tax wedge (OECD Taxing Wages 2026, covering 2025), which measures how much of an average single worker's total labour cost goes to income tax and social security contributions. Both cover the 38 OECD member countries only. Singapore, Hong Kong and the UAE are not OECD members and are not in either dataset, so this page no longer shows figures for them.
Source: OECD Revenue Statistics 2025, Table 1.1 (published 9 December 2025). 2023 data are final; 2024 data are provisional estimates supplied by countries, and preliminary 2024 data were not available for Australia and Japan. The OECD average is an unweighted average of member countries. The metric is total tax revenue of all levels of government, including social security contributions classified as taxes, divided by GDP.
| Country | 2024 (provisional) | 2023 (final) | Largest components of 2023 tax revenue (share of total tax revenue) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Denmark | 45.2% | 44.0% | Personal income tax 57.2%; social security contributions only 0.2%; VAT 20.8% |
| France | 43.5% | 43.9% | Social security contributions 33.2%; personal income tax 21.5%; VAT 16.6% |
| Austria | 43.4% | 42.6% | Social security contributions 35.1%; personal income tax 21.6%; VAT 18.6% |
| Italy | 42.8% | 41.5% | Social security contributions 29.6%; personal income tax 27.0%; VAT 15.7% |
| Belgium | 42.6% | 41.9% | Social security contributions 30.8%; personal income tax 27.9%; VAT 15.0% |
| Finland | 42.2% | 42.8% | Personal income tax 29.8%; social security contributions 29.1%; VAT 21.5% |
| Sweden | 41.4% | 41.7% | Personal income tax 26.9%; VAT 21.6%; social security contributions 21.5% |
| Norway | 40.2% | 41.6% | Corporate income tax 28.8%; personal income tax 23.0%; social security contributions 22.2% |
| Greece | 39.8% | 38.9% | Social security contributions 28.8%; VAT 22.5%; personal income tax 15.5% |
| Netherlands | 38.5% | 39.3% | Social security contributions 31.3%; personal income tax 23.3%; VAT 18.4% |
| Germany | 38.0% | 37.3% | Social security contributions 38.4%; personal income tax 26.4%; VAT 18.5% |
| Spain | 36.7% | 36.4% | Social security contributions 34.7%; personal income tax 24.4%; VAT 17.6% |
| Portugal | 35.1% | 35.3% | Social security contributions 29.1%; VAT 25.3%; personal income tax 19.4% |
| Canada | 34.9% | 34.8% | Personal income tax 35.9%; social security contributions 14.9%; VAT 13.8%; property 9.9% |
| United Kingdom | 34.4% | 35.0% | Personal income tax 30.2%; VAT 20.6%; social security contributions 19.1%; property 10.5% |
| Hungary | 34.4% | 35.0% | Social security contributions 28.3%; VAT 26.7%; other consumption taxes 19.0% |
| New Zealand | 32.9% | 33.7% | Personal income tax 41.7%; VAT (GST) 29.2%; no social security contributions |
| Switzerland | 27.2% | 26.9% | Personal income tax 31.2%; social security contributions 24.8%; corporate income tax 12.7% |
| United States | 25.6% | 25.6% | Personal income tax 40.0%; social security contributions 23.5%; property 11.3%; no VAT |
| Korea | 25.3% | 26.9% | Social security contributions 29.2%; personal income tax 19.8%; VAT 15.3% |
| Ireland | 21.7% | 21.3% | Personal income tax 31.1%; corporate income tax 21.5%; VAT 18.2% |
| Japan | not available | 33.7% | Social security contributions 39.1%; personal income tax 18.3%; VAT 14.7% |
| Australia | not available | 29.9% | Personal income tax 42.6%; corporate income tax 19.5%; no social security contributions |
| OECD average (unweighted) | 34.1% | 33.7% | Personal income tax 23.7%; social security contributions 25.5%; VAT 20.5% |
Belgium, Denmark, France, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Poland, Slovenia and Switzerland are footnoted by the OECD because their total tax revenue has been reduced by capital transfers that represent uncollected taxes. Mexico had the lowest ratio in 2024 (18.3%). Singapore, Hong Kong and the UAE are not covered by this OECD dataset.
Source: OECD Taxing Wages 2026 (April 2026), Table 1. The tax wedge is personal income tax plus employee and employer social security contributions (plus payroll taxes where they apply), minus cash benefits, as a percentage of total labour cost to the employer. The household modelled is a single worker with no children earning the average wage in that country in 2025. It does not include VAT, property tax or any tax the worker pays on spending.
| Country | Tax wedge, 2025 (% of labour cost) | Left as net pay per 100 of employer labour cost |
|---|---|---|
| Belgium | 52.5% | 47.5 |
| Germany | 49.3% | 50.7 |
| France | 47.2% | 52.8 |
| Austria | 47.1% | 52.9 |
| Italy | 45.8% | 54.2 |
| Slovenia | 45.3% | 54.7 |
| Slovak Republic | 42.7% | 57.3 |
| Estonia | 42.6% | 57.4 |
| Finland | 42.5% | 57.5 |
| Spain | 41.4% | 58.6 |
| Czechia | 41.2% | 58.8 |
| Hungary | 41.2% | 58.8 |
| Sweden | 41.1% | 58.9 |
| Türkiye | 40.3% | 59.7 |
| Luxembourg | 40.2% | 59.8 |
| Latvia | 40.1% | 59.9 |
| Lithuania | 39.8% | 60.2 |
| Portugal | 39.3% | 60.7 |
| Greece | 39.3% | 60.7 |
| Norway | 36.4% | 63.6 |
| Netherlands | 35.9% | 64.1 |
| Denmark | 35.8% | 64.2 |
| Poland | 35.0% | 65.0 |
| Japan | 33.1% | 66.9 |
| Ireland | 32.6% | 67.4 |
| United Kingdom | 32.4% | 67.6 |
| Canada | 32.1% | 67.9 |
| Iceland | 31.5% | 68.5 |
| United States | 30.0% | 70.0 |
| Australia | 27.9% | 72.1 |
| Costa Rica | 27.7% | 72.3 |
| Israel | 26.1% | 73.9 |
| Korea | 24.8% | 75.2 |
| Switzerland | 23.0% | 77.0 |
| Mexico | 21.7% | 78.3 |
| New Zealand | 20.8% | 79.2 |
| Chile | 7.5% | 92.5 |
| Colombia | 0.0% | 100.0 |
| OECD average | 35.1% | 64.9 |
The OECD notes that the wedge exceeded 45% of labour costs in Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy and Slovenia and was below 20% in Chile and Colombia. In Colombia the average single worker paid no personal income tax in 2025, and contributions to pension, health and employment risk insurance are treated as non-tax compulsory payments, so they are not counted. Across the OECD the wedge for this household rose by 0.15 percentage points in 2025; it rose in 24 countries, fell in 11 and was unchanged in three. For comparison, the OECD reports an average wedge of 26.2% for a one-earner married couple with two children at the average wage.
A country can look very different on the two measures because they count different things. Using only figures from the two tables above:
Tax-to-GDP is affected by corporate taxes, taxes on spending and property, the size of GDP, and how a country classifies compulsory contributions. The wedge isolates labour taxation for one stylised worker. Neither tells you what a particular person pays; for that, use the calculator for your country.
The last column of the first table shows how different the revenue mixes are. All shares below are 2023 percentages of total tax revenue from OECD Revenue Statistics 2025, Table 1.1, unless stated otherwise.
Social security contributions were the largest or near-largest source in Germany (38.4%), Austria (35.1%), Spain (34.7%), France (33.2%), the Netherlands (31.3%), Belgium (30.8%) and Italy (29.6%). The OECD average is 25.5%. In its Taxing Wages data, the OECD reports that employers in France paid 26.7% of labour costs in social security contributions for the average single worker, the highest among OECD countries, and that combined employee and employer contributions were at least one-third of labour costs in Austria, Czechia, France, Germany, the Slovak Republic and Slovenia.
Denmark raised 57.2% of its tax revenue from personal income tax and only 0.2% from social security contributions, the most income-tax-reliant mix in the table (the OECD average for personal income tax is 23.7%). Australia (42.6%), New Zealand (41.7%) and the United States (40.0%) also relied on personal income tax for around 40% or more. Australia and New Zealand show 0.0% from social security contributions in the OECD classification.
Value-added tax provided 29.2% of New Zealand's revenue, 26.7% of Hungary's and 25.3% of Portugal's, against an OECD average of 20.5%. Hungary also raised a further 19.0% from other consumption taxes such as excise duties.
The United States has no national VAT (the OECD shows 0.0% of revenue from VAT) and raised 16.6% of its revenue from other consumption taxes, which include state and local sales taxes. In 2023, 41.5% of US tax revenue went to the central government, 20.5% to state governments, 14.5% to local governments and 23.5% to social security funds (OECD Revenue Statistics 2025, same chapter, tax revenue by sub-sector of government). Property taxes were 11.3% of US revenue, 10.5% in the UK and 9.9% in Canada, against an OECD average of 5.1%.
The wedge tells you how many units of an employer's total labour cost reach the employee as net pay, for an average single worker with no children. The last column of the wedge table is simply 100 minus the wedge. For example, in Belgium about 47.5 of every 100 of labour cost reaches the worker as net pay; in the OECD average, 64.9; in the United States, 70.0; in Switzerland, 77.0. This excludes VAT and other taxes on spending, so it understates the full burden, and it uses each country's own average wage, which differs widely in absolute terms between countries.
The wedge also depends on the make-up of the labour cost. In 2025 the OECD reports that personal income tax ranged from 0% of labour costs in Colombia and Costa Rica to 35.1% in Denmark, and that employee social security contributions were 0.0% of labour costs in Australia, Colombia, Denmark and New Zealand. A country with low income tax can still have a large wedge through employer contributions.
To see the split of income tax and social security for a specific salary, use the country calculators listed under the related links; they apply each country's current statutory rates and are not based on these averages.
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