R i g h t a r d i a: International Tax revenue as percentage of GDP

Thursday, February 18, 2010

International Tax revenue as percentage of GDP

Conservatives have doing a great job of confusing Americans about taxes. If you look at the tax comparisons below between countries, the US actually has the lowest taxes of almost all of the Northern Atlantic and large European countries.

A progressive income tax benefits the middle class because it puts more tax burden on the higher earning income earners. However, most American taxes such as municipal estate or sales tax are actually regressive or flat. Accordingly, the middle class and the poor actually pay a higher percentage of their income in taxes than the wealthy.

Conservative efforts to flatten taxes have had a bad impact on the middle class. One third became wealthy and during the Reagan era and two thirds treadled water of declined.

Beware of Republicans bearing tax gifts. Most of the problems we have in the Great Recession are due to conservative tax fiddling and deregulation.

The percentages in the three tax columns were derived from the references.

1 2 3

Australia 30.5 30.6

Brazil 38.8

Canada 33.4 33.3

China,

People's Republic of 17.0

Denmark 50.0 48.9 49.1

France 46.1 43.6 44.2

Germany 40.6 36.2 39.3

Italy 42.6 43.3 42.3

Israel 36.8

Russia 36.9

New Zealand 36.5 36.0

Sweden 49.7 48.2 48.9

Switzerland 30.1 29.7

United Kingdom 39.0 36.6 37.4

United States 28.2 28.3

References

2009 Index of Economic Freedom, Heritage Foundation. Accessed on May 2, 2009. Note: Tax revenue as a percentage of GDP was obtained from the individual country pages, under the "Fiscal Freedom" section. The year for the data for each country is not mentioned, but the source claims to use the most recent data up to June 30, 2008.[1]
Revenue Statistics 1965-2007, 2008 Edition. OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development). ISBN 9789264051393 (book), ISBN 9789264051409 (ebook), and ISBN 9789264051485 (CD). Publication date: October 15, 2008. The data is found in Table A. Total tax revenue as percentage of GDP. By OECD nation, and by regional averages. 1975 to 2006. With provisional data also for 2007.
Taxation Trends in the EU. 2008 edition. Taxation and Customs Union. European Commission. June 26, 2008 EUROSTAT (Statistical Office of the European Communities) press release: Taxation trends in the EU. EU27 tax ratio at 39.9% of GDP in 2006. See note 2 at the end for the meaning of the 2-letter country codes. See also: 2-Letter Country Codes.