If God squeezes but does not suffocate, neither will the Treasury. The fiscal pressure in the member countries of the OECD, the organization that brings together the most prosperous economies on the planet, recorded a slight decrease in 2022. It is the third time that a decrease has occurred since the data was collected, since the decade of the sixties. This slight decline is explained by the energy crisis, which forced several states to reduce taxes – direct and indirect – to help households cope with the increase in electricity, gas or gasoline bills.
Calculated in terms of percentage of taxes on GDP, the tax burden on the OECD economies as a whole fell two tenths, reaching 34%. It remains the second highest figure in history, just below the 2021 record, which shows that the role of the State in the economy has increased over time, “given the need to finance growing public sector spending.” , as the study recognizes.
The decline in 2022 occurred in almost all of the organization’s member countries. But when it comes to examining the comparative situation, many differences emerge. In absolute terms, the percentage ranges from 16.9% in Mexico to 46.1% in France. In Spain, the ratio of taxes to GDP is 37.5%.
To assess this data, at a time when the political agenda repeatedly talks about the need to increase the fiscal pressure to balance the accounts, it must be considered that it is higher than the average of OECD countries, but there are twelve states that have a higher indicator. Last year there were thirteen, which means that Spain has risen one place in the ranking.
In any case, Spain continues to be one of the countries that has registered a more substantial tax increase in recent years, if one considers that in 2009, when the financial crisis broke out, the fiscal weight on GDP was only 29.7%, about 7.8 points less than now. Since then, except in the cases of Greece, Korea and Japan, in no other country has the tax ratio increased so much.
Relative to the rest of the OECD, the tax structure in Spain is characterized by higher revenues from Social Security contributions and property taxes. In contrast, the proportion of taxes on individuals and corporations and VAT is lower than average.
It is striking that of the total tax revenue collected in Spain, according to the OECD, the tax portion attributable to corporate tax is 10.2%, less than half of that which comes from personal income tax.
When the debate on the requirement to set a minimum corporate tax at a global level is alive, OECD research confirms that, barring some oscillations, from 1965 to today companies continue to contribute in a stable manner 10% of the total collection fiscal. There are even countries in which the percentage is less than 5% (Estonia, Greece, Italy or Latvia) and others in which it exceeds 20% (Australia or Norway). The OECD explains these differences by the effect of incentives or the calculation of the statistical base.
One last piece of information refers to the decentralization of the states. The Spanish autonomous administrations, which in 1995 collected 5% of total tax revenue, in 2021 (the last year with comparable data available) had increased that quota to 15.7%: three times more. In Germany, a federal state with the länder, this percentage exceeds 24%.
