Bartlett: Tax Tea Parties Misstate U.S. Tax Burden

Forbes: Tax Tea Party Time?, by Bruce Bartlett:

To protest the allegedly high level of taxation in the United States, various right-wing groups are organizing tea parties around the country [for April 15] in the spirit of the Boston Tea Party of 1773.

The irony of these protests is that federal revenues as a share of the gross domestic product will be lower this year than any year since 1950. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the federal government will take only 15.5% of GDP in taxes this year, compared to 17.7% last year, 18.8% in 2007 and 20.9% in 2000.

The truth is that the U.S. is a relatively low-tax country no matter how you slice the data. The following tables illustrate this fact by comparing the U.S. to other members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, a Paris-based research organization.

As Table 1 shows, total taxation (federal, state and local) amounted to 28% of the GDP in the U.S. in 2006. Only four of the 30 OECD countries had a lower tax ratio. Taxes averaged 35.9% for the OECD as a whole and 38% in Europe. Citizens of Denmark and Sweden paid very close to 50% of their total income in taxes.

Table 1: Total Taxes as a Share of GDP, 2006

Denmark	49.1	U.K.	37.1	Ireland	31.9
Sweden	49.1	Hungary	37.1	Greece	31.3
Belgium	44.5	Czech Rep.	36.9	Australia	30.6
France	44.2	N.Z.	36.7	Slovak Rep.	29.8
Norway	43.9	Spain	36.6	Switzerland	29.6
Finland	43.5	Luxembourg	35.9	U.S.	28.0
Italy	42.1	Portugal	35.7	Japan	27.9
Austria	41.7	Germany	35.6	Korea	26.8
Iceland	41.5	Poland	33.5	Turkey	24.5
Netherlands	39.3	Canada	33.3	Mexico	20.6