The OECD highlights in its report Income statistics 1965-2023published this Thursday, that Spain is one of the developed countries where budgetary pressure has increased the most over the last thirteen years, with a proportion of central government revenues much higher than that of regional and local governments.
Concretely, the multilateral organization places our country fifth in terms of tax pressure out of the 38 that make it up, or 37.3% of GDP, compared to the average of 33.9% for the group of countries that are part of the OECD. Spanish figures show a very slight reduction in the tax burden compared to previous years, but it has remained practically stagnant. In 2020, it recorded a tax burden of 37.6% of GDP, while in 2021 it was 37.8%. The decline does not even reach a point and is very far from the 33% recorded in 2000.
Generally speaking, the pressure has increased over the last thirteen years in 29 countries, but in the OECD, Spain, Portugal and Luxembourg stand out with “an increase of more than five percentage points” of budgetary pressure. In contrast, the biggest decline was recorded in Ireland, which fell from 27.7% of GDP in 2010 to 21.0% last year.
Compared to other similar economies, France stands out as one of the countries with the highest tax burden, for the second year in a row. The neighboring country closed the 2023 financial year at 43.8% relative to GDP. Denmark and Italy follow, with 43.4% and 42.8% respectively. Austria also tops the ranking, with a load of 42.8%, followed by Belgium (42.6%) and Finland (42.4%).
The experts of think tank They introduce Spain into the category of “regional countries” instead of unitary, because they consider it a “highly decentralized” state and, therefore, there are different tax components of income depending on the level of administration. In this sense, the proportion of central government revenue in 2022 it was 42.5%, compared to 15.1% for regional government and 8.2% for local government, according to the document.
On the high side of the table, the United States tops the list as the country with the lowest taxes (25.2% of GDP), followed by Costa Rica (24.9%), Turkey (23 .5%) and Colombia (22.2%). , Ireland (21.9%), Chile (20.6%) and Mexico (17.7%).
The OECD says that in 2021 the highest tax rates were recorded, with Spain at 37.8% of GDPcompared to an average for the entire group of 34.1%. They explain that this is because the Covid-19 pandemic has caused a deep global recession that has significantly reduced GDP and increased the relative burden of taxes.
Likewise, since 2010, the year in which the consequences of the financial crisis were felt, the weight of taxes in Spain was 31.3%, significantly lower than the 36.4% they represented in 2007, at the day before the outbreak of the said economic crisis.
Generally speaking, the Spanish tax structure is quite similar to that of the rest of European countries. In most cases, Social Security contributions constitute the main item, representing between 10 and 15% of GDP. In 2023, in Spain it was 12.9%, which is much lower than France (14.6%) and Germany (14.7%). On the other hand, they are very far from 6.7% in the United Kingdom and 6.1% in the United States.
Taxes on income and profits constitute the second highest item, at 12% of GDP, while taxes on goods and services had a weight of 10%.
If we isolate corporate tax (which companies pay for their profits), in 2022, the last year for which there are figures, in Spain it increased by a tenth to reach 2.7% of GDP , with a relatively low relative weight, much lower than that of corporate tax. the average of 3.9% in the OECD area.
These corporate interest rates were particularly high in Australia (6.4% of GDP), Chile (5.6%), South Korea (5.4%), Colombia (5%) and especially in Norway (18.4%). In the United States, on the contrary, corporate taxes have been limited to 2% of GDP in 2022.
