Tax-to-GDP ratios in OECD countries in 2023
The average tax-to-GDP ratio across OECD member countries remained stable at 33.9% in 2023.
The tax-to-GDP ratio measures the share of a country’s total economic output that is collected in taxes. In simpler terms, it compares a government’s annual tax revenues with the size of its overall economy. This ratio is often seen as a barometer of how governments balance their revenue needs—such as funding education, healthcare and infrastructure—with the potential burden placed on individuals and businesses.
In this post, we’ll take a closer look at newly published provisional data for 2023 covering almost all OECD countries, released in the OECD Revenue Statistics 2024. We will also cover how you can explore the data further yourself on the OECD website.
Stable tax-to-GDP ratio in 2023
The average tax-to-GDP ratio across OECD member countries remained stable at 33.9% in 2023, down just 0.1 percentage points from 2022, according to the OECD data. Although this is the second straight year of slight decline, the figure remains above its pre-pandemic level of 33.4% in 2019.
France had the highest tax-to-GDP ratio in 2023
An overview of tax burdens across OECD countries shows that they differ markedly, ranging from 17.7% of GDP in Mexico to 43.8% in France — a gap of 26.1 percentage points. A total of 9 countries, including France, had a tax-to-GDP ratio of more than 40%. Notably, France also had the highest ratio in 2022.
Japan has seen the largest increase since 2010
The OECD data shows that since 2010, the tax-to-GDP ratio has increased in 29 OECD countries, with Japan, the Slovak Republic and Greece recording the biggest jumps. Ireland, on the other hand, experienced the steepest decline (-5.8 percentage points), largely due to an exceptional surge in its GDP in 2015.
It’s important to note that a rise in the tax-to-GDP ratio does not automatically mean tax revenues themselves are higher in absolute terms. Sometimes, the economy might be shrinking (bringing GDP down) even if taxes stay relatively stable, which would push the ratio up. Conversely, an economy might boom while tax revenues grow only a little, causing the ratio to fall. Essentially, the ratio reflects how tax revenues and economic output grow or contract relative to each other.
Recent figures for 2023 highlight this dynamic: nominal tax revenues rose in 31 of the 36 OECD countries reporting data, while nominal GDP increased in 33. In Denmark and Ireland, tax revenues went up even though GDP fell, causing the tax-to-GDP ratio to increase. The opposite was true in the United States, Israel, Korea and Chile, where GDP increased while tax revenues went down in nominal terms.
Meanwhile, in Norway, both tax revenues and GDP declined, but revenues dropped more sharply—pulling the ratio down (-2.0 pp compared to 2022). These movements underscore that the tax-to-GDP ratio reflects how tax revenues and economic output change relative to each other, rather than purely measuring absolute increases or decreases in tax receipts.
Further reading
One of the main goals of this Substack is to provide practical insights on data trends and useful recommendations for open data sources and visualisation tools.
Data source
The data used in this article is published by OECD. The 2023 provisional data were published in November 2024 in their annual Revenue Statistics report.
You can explore the dataset further in the OECD Data Explorer. Also, the report is available to read as an interactive version here. One tip is that in order to get the data behind the charts presented in the report, look for a blue “Statlink” icon. This will link to an Excel file where you will find all the data used in that chart.
Visualisation tool
The charts and tables used in this post is made with Datawrapper.
The data in the charts used in this article can be downloaded directly from the link below the charts by pressing “Get the data”. This can be helpful if you want to create your own visualisations from this dataset.
If you find it helpful to reuse these charts, I have made them available on Datawrapper River, where you can find a “Reuse this chart” button using the below links. Doing that will import the chart directly into your Datawrapper account (which is free to set-up). In this way you can, for example, try out different ways to visualise the data.
Datawrapper River links: