ATHENS: Total tax burden of unmarried wage earners in Greece with an average income from income tax and social contributions paid by both workers and employers, grew by 1.06 percentage points in 2016 compared with 2015 to 40.2 percent of total employer’s labor cost, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) said in its Taxing Wages 2015-2016 report released on Tuesday.
OECD member-states recorded an average decline of 0.07 percentage point to 36 percent, with Belgium (54 percent), Germany (49.4 percent), Hungary (48.2 percent) and France (48.1 percent) recording the highest rates of taxation in this category, while Chile (7.0 percent), New Zealand (17.9 percent) and Mexico (20.1 percent) the lowest rates.
An increase in tax burden in Greece was the result of an increase in income tax (0.67 percentage point), higher social contributions of workers (0.20 percentage point) and employers (0.19 percentage point). The burden, however, mainly represents employers and workers contributions (19.9 percent and 12.6 percent, respectively), while income tax accounted for 7.7 percent.
For families with two children, with only one parent working, total tax burden grew by 0.73 percentage point in 2016 to 38.3 percent of labor cost for employers. In the OECD, the average burden of same families eased slightly (0.08 percentage point) to 26.6 percent.
Tax burden of unmarried wage earners with an average income from income tax and social contributions paid by themselves was 25.4 percent of gross earnings in 2016, slightly lower from the OECD average of 25.5 percent.
