DUBLIN:Ireland now has the lowest tax-to-GDP measure across 30 European countries, new figures from Eurostat have shown. The metric is calculated by dividing the tax revenue collected by the Government from the gross domestic product (GDP). When tax revenues grow at a slower rate than the GDP, the ratio falls, and the metric is sometimes used to identify low tax economies, although given the importance of multinationals to the Irish economy, it can be difficult to compare Ireland with other economies.
According to the figures, Ireland had the lowest tax revenues as a percentage of GDP in 2015, at just 24.4 per cent, behind Romania (28 per cent), Bulgaria (29 per cent), Lithuania (29.4 per cent) and Latvia (29.5 per cent). The overall tax-to-GDP ratio for the EU was considerably higher, at 40 per cent, stable compared with 2014. In the euro zone, tax revenue accounted in 2015 for 41.4 per cent of GDP, slightly down from 41.5 per cent in 2014.
