When income taxes, social security contributions, taxes on property, goods and services are all added together they account for 45.3 percent of France’s overall earnings. That’s a slight rise of 0.1 percent on 2015, but still below the peak of 45.5 percent reached in 2014.
In podium-topping Denmark, all taxes combined were worth 45.9 percent of the country’s wealth. Although the one big difference is Denmark has a budget deficit of 0.6 percent in 2016 while in France it was 3.4 percent.
In third place came Belgium where the tax to GDP ratio was 44.2 percent in 2016.
In the US it was far lower with 26 percent of the country’s GDP coming from direct taxes and in the UK it was 33.2 percent.
The OECD average stands at 34.3 percent.
The French do of course get something in return for all these taxes they pay, notably a generous pensions system, a healthcare system that was judge the best in the world (albeit a few years ago now) and generous unemployment and family benefits.
In terms of the breakdown in France, one of the differences to other OECD countries is that income tax plays a much more minor role in revenues (10.6 percent) while social security contributions make up 16.7 percent.
