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Wikipedia definition of tax wedge references a document, which makes following claim:

Europe's comparatively high tax burden has created big marginal effects and tax wedges. For example a 2007 report by a right-wing thinktank, Timbro, calculated the amount going to the service worker's wallet is approximately 10% in Belgium, 15% in Sweden, 30% in Ireland and the UK, compared to 50% in the United States.

vartec
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    Timbro, in turn, references: N Karlson, D Johansson, R Johnsson, *Skatter och värdighet* (2004) - (translates to *Taxes and Dignity*), which is in Swedish and tricky to find. – Oddthinking Apr 14 '14 at 12:51
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    @Oddthinking: actually I was hoping for sources newer than the original paper, which is now a decade old. – vartec Apr 14 '14 at 13:02
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    Sorry, @vartec, wasn't supposed to be an answer. I should have been clearer. Just that was where I reached a dead-end. I confess I find the Wikipedia/Timbro claim (including the extracted table from Karlson et al) unintelligible (which does not imply it is wrong), and I hoped by chasing it back I could find the original claim with more concrete detail of what it meant. The Swedish stopped me; maybe someone else will get further. – Oddthinking Apr 14 '14 at 13:25
  • From a german perspective the numbers are bogus: income tax in Germany is between 0 and 45%. Even if you include social security, you won't get higher than ca. 60%. – Martin Schröder Apr 18 '14 at 18:48
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    @MartinSchröder: you're thinking of what employee pays in taxes, not the total payed by employer. Also you're not taking in account that every euro spent is taxed with VAT. – vartec May 04 '14 at 13:30
  • @Oddthinking, "Skatter och värdighet" is a book, published by Norstedts (ISBN: 978-91-7568-062-0), listed [here](http://www.norstedts.se/bocker/112010-skatter-och-vardighet). It seems to only be available as a dead-tree version which is why you prob. would not find it much online. –  Jul 13 '17 at 20:55

1 Answers1

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These are not the standard calculations of tax wedges as measured internationally, as well as being over a decade out of date.

A better source might be the OECD's publication Taxing Wages. The 2016 report (page 19) includes the following numbers for tax wedges as a % of labour costs in 2015 for a single person (no family) on average wages:

           Total tax wedge  Income tax  Social Security Employee   Social Security Employer 

Belgium          55.3%         21.6%              10.8%                    22.9%          
Sweden           42.7%         13.5%               5.3%                    23.9%
USA              31.7%         16.5%               7.0%                     8.1% 
UK               30.8%         12.8%               8.4%                     9.7%
Ireland          27.5%         14.2%               3.6%                     9.7%

The rest of the 500+ page report goes into more detail, for example on second earners, or families with children, or different wage levels. On page 548, among the limitations of the report, it says

Employers' contributions to private pension, family allowance or health and life insurance schemes are excluded though the amounts involved can be significant. In the United States, for example, these contributions can account for more than 5% of the earnings of employees.

I suspect it also excludes employees' private contributions, but does not see these as potentially part of a wedge between gross labour costs and net pay. So a country which funds these through taxes or social security might be expected to have a higher tax wedge than one which does not.

Henry
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    You're providing numbers based on _wages_, while us I understand the concept of the document in claim, it's based on what end client pays for the service. So if client pays €100 for a service in Belgium, service provider gets only €82 because of VAT. Then at least 55.3% of these €82 go to taxes. So even if the company providing service would pay no additional taxes besides VAT, that would be totaling 63% tax burden. – vartec Oct 04 '16 at 20:51
  • Basing the "tax wedge" on wages is the international standard - [*The Economist* in 2000](http://www.economist.com/node/347867) "The difference between workers' take-home pay and what it costs to employ them—the so-called “tax wedge”—consists of income tax and the social-security contributions of employees and employers". I suppose you could throw in the buyer's and the seller's income taxes and choose something facing VAT in Europe but not sales tax in parts of the US if you wanted to make a political point. Why not corporation tax too? – Henry Oct 04 '16 at 20:56
  • CIT is paid on _profit_ rather than revenue of the company, so not relevant here. – vartec Oct 04 '16 at 21:05
  • What about pension and health care costs? If the employer has to pay for these things then that should be considered part of the "wedge" as it is a cost of employment that doesn't go into the take-home pay. – Paul Johnson Oct 04 '16 at 21:19
  • @PaulJohnson - the OECD would acknowledge your point (it already does) but say that private health and pensions were not part of a *tax* wedge – Henry Oct 04 '16 at 21:21