Tax-to-GDP Ratio: Comparing Tax Systems Around the World
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Tax-to-GDP Ratio: Comparing Tax Systems Around the World

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Tax-to-GDP ratio for countries

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The Briefing

  • The tax-to-GDP ratio measures a country’s tax revenue, relative to the size of its economy (measured by its Gross Domestic Product, or GDP)
  • A higher tax-to-GDP ratio means more money is going to government coffers, and in theory, public services like education and infrastructure
  • Out of 35 OECD countries, Denmark has the highest tax-to-GDP ratio at 46.3%, while Mexico ranks last at 16.5%

Tax-to-GDP Ratio: Comparing Tax Systems Around the World

Taxes are an important source of revenue for most countries. In fact, taxes provide around 50% or more of government funds in almost every country in the world.

How does each country’s tax system compare to one another? This question is tricky to answer. Since countries’ populations and economies differ greatly, measuring total tax revenue is not the best way to compare international tax systems.

Instead, using a tax-to-GDP ratio is one of the more useful ways to compare tax systems around the world.

What is the Tax-to-GDP Ratio?

The tax-to-GDP ratio compares a country’s tax revenue to the size of its economy, which in this case is measured by its GDP.

The higher the ratio, the higher the proportion of money that goes to government coffers. If managed effectively, this can support the long-term health and prosperity of an economy. According to research conducted by the International Monetary Fund, countries should have a tax-to-GDP ratio of at least 12% in order to experience accelerated economic growth.

The countries that are part of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) all meet that threshold, with an average tax-to-GDP ratio of 33.8%.

Ranked: The Tax-to-GDP Ratios of OECD countries

The dataset used for this graphic looks at 35 of the 37 OECD countries, since recent data for Australia and Japan was not available.

RankCountryTax Revenue as % of GDP
1🇩🇰 Denmark46.3%
2🇫🇷 France45.4%
3🇧🇪 Belgium42.9%
4🇸🇪 Sweden42.9%
5🇦🇹 Austria42.4%
6🇮🇹 Italy42.4%
7🇫🇮 Finland42.2%
8🇳🇴 Norway39.9%
9🇳🇱 Netherlands39.3%
10🇱🇺 Luxembourg39.2%
11🇩🇪 Germany38.8%
12🇬🇷 Greece38.7%
13🇸🇮 Slovenia37.7%
14🇮🇸 Iceland36.1%
15🇭🇺 Hungary35.8%
16🇵🇱 Poland35.4%
17🇨🇿 Czech Republic34.9%
18🇵🇹 Portugal34.8%
19🇸🇰 Slovak Republic34.7%
20🇪🇸 Spain34.6%
21🇨🇦 Canada33.5%
22🇪🇪 Estonia33.1%
23🇬🇧 United Kingdom33.0%
24🇳🇿 New Zealand32.3%
25🇱🇻 Latvia31.2%
26🇮🇱 Israel30.5%
27🇱🇹 Lithuania30.3%
28🇨🇭 Switzerland28.5%
29🇰🇷 South Korea27.4%
30🇺🇸 United States24.5%
31🇹🇷 Turkey23.1%
32🇮🇪 Ireland22.7%
33🇨🇱 Chile20.7%
34🇨🇴 Colombia19.7%
35🇲🇽 Mexico16.5%
OECD Average33.8%

At 46.3%, Denmark has the highest ratio on the list. The country puts its relatively high tax revenue to use, particularly when it comes to subsidizing post-secondary education—in Denmark, university is free for all EU citizens.

On the less-taxed end of the spectrum, the U.S. ranks 30 out of 35, with a ratio of 24.5%—that’s notably lower than the OECD average of 33.8%. It’s also worth mentioning that the U.S. has one of the highest GDP per capita measures out of all OECD countries.

Where does America’s tax revenue come from? It gains most of its revenue from the personal income tax. In fact, 41% of the country’s total tax revenue comes from taxes on personal income, as well as individual profits and gains—for context, the OECD average is 24%.

With President Biden’s recent announcement to increase corporate taxes and personal investment gains, America’s ratio could look a lot different in the near future.

>>Like this? You might find this article interesting, Unequal State Tax Burdens Across America

Where does this data come from?

Source: OECD
Details: This source uses 2019 provisional data to calculate each country’s tax-to-GDP ratio. For more information on methodology, read the full report by clicking here.

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Seeing Red: Is the Heydey of Pandemic Stocks Over?

Worries over post-COVID demand and rising interest rates have fueled a market selloff, with pandemic stocks hit particularly hard.

Published

2 days ago

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January 21, 2022

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pandemic stocks

The Briefing

  • Global equities are in a downward spiral, and experienced their worst week in more than a year.
  • Worries about slowing post-COVID demand and rising rates fueled the selloff.
  • Pandemic stocks were some of the hardest hit, with Shopify and Netflix dropping 35.3% and 33.5% respectively.

Seeing Red: Is the Heydey of Pandemic Stocks Over?

The stock market, and the stocks that flourished during the COVID-19 pandemic in particular, are off to a rough start in 2022. If you’ve been watching your investment accounts, chances are you’ve been seeing a lot of red. Shaken by the uncertainty of a pandemic recovery and future interest rate hikes, investors have been selling off their stocks.

This market selloff—which occurs when investors sell a large volume of securities in a short period of time, leading to a rapid decline in price—has investors concerned. In fact, search interest for the term “selloff” recently reached peak interest of 100.

2022 market selloff

Which stocks were the hardest hit, and how much are their prices down so far this year?

The Lackluster Returns of Pandemic Stocks

Pandemic stocks and tech-centric companies have suffered the most. Here’s a closer look at the year-to-date price returns for select stocks.

CompanyYear-to-Date Price Return
Shopify-35.3%
Roblox-30.2%
Block-28.0%
Moderna-31.9%
Zoom-19.9%
Netflix-33.5%
Snapchat-31.1%
Peloton-23.1%
Coinbase-23.5%
DocuSign-26.0%
Amazon-16.3%
Robinhood-29.6%

Price returns are in U.S. dollars based on data from January 3, 2022 to January 21, 2022.

Netflix fueled the selloff after it reported disappointing subscriber growth. The company added 8.28 million subscribers in the fourth quarter, which is less than the 8.5 million it added in the fourth quarter of 2020. It also projects to have slower year-over-year subscriber growth in the near term, citing competition from other streaming companies.

Meanwhile, Coinbase stock lost nearly a quarter of its value so far this year. As the price of cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin have plummeted, investors worry Coinbase will see lower trading volume and therefore lower fees.

The contagion also spread to other pandemic stocks, such as Zoom and DocuSign, as investors began to doubt the staying power of stay-at-home stocks.

Following the Herd

While investor exuberance drove many of these stocks up last year, 2022 is beginning to paint a different picture.

Investors are worried that rising rates will negatively impact high-growth stocks, because it means it’s more expensive to borrow money. Not only that, but they also may see Netflix’s growth as harbinger of things to come for other pandemic stocks.

The psychology of the market cycle also plays a role—amid these fears, investors have adopted a herd mentality and begun selling their shares in droves.

Where does this data come from?

Source: Google Finance

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Datastream

How People Around the World Feel About Their Economic Prospects

In many of the world’s largest economies, including the U.S., Germany, and China, optimism around economic prospects sits at an all-time low.

Published

3 days ago

on

January 20, 2022

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economic prospects of people around the world

The Briefing

  • Economic prospects are at an all-time low in nine countries, including the U.S., Canada, Germany, Japan, and China
  • China and the U.S. experienced the biggest year-over-year drops, at -8 p.p. and -6 p.p., respectively

How Countries Feel About Their Economic Prospects

Each year, the Edelman Trust Barometer report helps gauge the level of trust people place in various systems of power.

The report is also a useful tool to gauge the general mood in countries around the world—and when it comes to how people in developed economies feel about the near future, there’s a very clear answer: pessimistic. In fact, optimism about respondents’ economic prospects fell in the majority of countries surveyed.

Here’s a full look how many respondents in 28 countries feel they and their families will be doing better over the next five years. Or, put more simply, what percentage of people are optimistic about their economic circumstances?

Country% who are optimisticAll-time low?Change from 2021 (p.p.)
🇯🇵 Japan15%✅-1
🇫🇷 France18%✅-1
🇩🇪 Germany22%✅-2
🇮🇹 Italy27%✅0
🇳🇱 Netherlands29%✅-1
🇬🇧 UK30%+2
🇷🇺 Russia31%+1
🇨🇦 Canada34%✅-1
🇪🇸 Spain36%+1
🇰🇷 South Korea39%+6
🇺🇸 U.S.40%✅-6
🇦🇺 Australia41%-2
🇮🇪 Ireland42%-1
🇸🇬 Singapore43%-1
🌐 Global51%0
🇲🇾 Malaysia55%✅0
🇦🇷 Argentina60%-2
🇹🇭 Thailand60%-2
🇨🇳 China64%✅-8
🇿🇦 South Africa66%-2
🇲🇽 Mexico68%-1
🇧🇷 Brazil73%0
🇸🇦 Saudi Arabia73%0
🇦🇪 UAE78%+6
🇮🇳 India80%0
🇮🇩 Indonesia81%+11
🇨🇴 Colombia83%-1
🇳🇬 Nigeria87%n/a
🇰🇪 Kenya91%-2

Interestingly, nine countries (those with checkmarks above) are polling at all-time lows for economic optimism in survey history.

Whose Glass is Half Empty?

Japanese respondents were the most pessimistic, with only 15% seeing positive economic prospects in the near term. Only 18% of French respondents were economically optimistic.

While most developed economies were slightly more optimistic than Japan and France, all are still well below the global average.

As tensions between China and the U.S. continue to heat up in 2022, there is one thing that can unite citizens in the two countries—a general feeling that economic prospects are souring. As the U.S. heads into midterm elections and China’s 20th National Party Congress takes place, leaders in both countries will surely have the economy on their minds.

Whose Glass is Half Full?

Of course, the mood isn’t all doom and gloom everywhere. The United Arab Emirates saw a 6 percentage point (p.p.) jump in their population’s economic prospects.

Indonesia saw an 11 p.p. increase, and in big developing economies like Brazil and India, the general level of optimism is still quite high.

In some ways, it’s no surprise that people in developing economies are more optimistic about their economic prospects. Living standards are generally rising in many of these countries, and more opportunities open up as the economy grows. Even in the most pessimistic African country surveyed, South Africa, the majority of people still see improving circumstances in their near future. In Kenya and Nigeria, an overwhelming majority are optimistic.

Diverging Outcomes

One major prediction that experts agreed on for the year ahead is that economic outcomes will begin to diverge between countries with differing levels of vaccine access.

While this doesn’t seem to have affected attitudes towards economic optimism yet, it remains to be seen how this will play out as the year progresses.

Where does this data come from?

Source: 2022 Edelman Trust Barometer

Data notes: This data is derived from Edelman’s annual Trust Barometer survey, which includes 30,000+ respondents in countries around the world.

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