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Charted: Tax Revenue vs. GDP for Major Countries Published 11 hours ago
on August 8, 2024
By Pallavi Rao
Graphics/Design:
Miranda Smith
See this visualization first on the Voronoi app.

A chart ranking the world’s major economies (G20 members) by their
tax-to-GDP ratios, as sourced from OECD Revenue Statistics 2023.

USE THIS VISUALIZATION

Charted: Tax Revenue vs. GDP for Major Countries
This was originally posted on our Voronoi app. Download the app for free
on iOS or Android and discover incredible data-driven charts from a
variety of trusted sources.

In this visualization, we rank the world’s major economies by their
tax-to-GDP ratios, as sourced from OECD Revenue Statistics 2023.

The tax-to-GDP ratio measures a country’s tax revenue relative to the
size of its economy.

Why does it matter?

A higher ratio may indicate higher taxes and more government revenue
coming in compared to economic output. Meanwhile, a lower level reflects
a lighter tax burden relative to the size of the economy.

EU Countries Understand Tax Collection
European countries have some of the highest tax revenues, relative to
their economies, in the world.

Amongst the G20 economies, the top three by tax-to-GDP ratio all belong
to the European Union, and the fourth (the UK) only left the collective
in 2020.

Rank G20 Member Region Tax-to-GDP Ratio
1 🇫🇷 France Europe 46%
2 🇮🇹 Italy Europe 43%
3 🇩🇪 Germany Europe 39%
4 🇬🇧 UK Europe 34%
5 🇨🇦 Canada Americas 33%
6 🇧🇷 Brazil Americas 33%
7 🇯🇵 Japan Asia 33%
8 🇰🇷 South Korea Asia 32%
9 🇦🇷 Argentina Americas 30%
10 🇦🇺 Australia Oceania 30%
11 🇺🇸 U.S. Americas 28%
12 🇿🇦 South Africa Africa 27%
13 🇷🇺 Russia Europe 23%
14 🇹🇷 Türkiye Europe 21%
15 🇨🇳 China Asia 20%
16 🇲🇽 Mexico Americas 17%
17 🇮🇳 India Asia 12%
18 🇮🇩 Indonesia Asia 12%
19 🇸🇦 Saudi Arabia Asia 8%

N/A 🌐 World World 15%

Note: Figures rounded. Data as of 2022, sourced from OECD Revenue
Statistics 2023. The EU is also a G20 member but is not included for
this visualization.
However, regional trends don’t hold up past that. On the other hand,
economic trends are more noticeable. For example, eight of the top 10 in
the ranking are high income countries per World Bank classifications.

And in contrast, the only two lower-middle income countries in the G20,
India and Indonesia, are in the bottom three.

The World Bank says a 15% ratio is critical for economic growth and
poverty reduction. A 10-year study estimated that the per capita GDP for
countries that hit the 15% threshold would be 7.5% larger than if they
had not.

China is one of the best examples for this phenomenon where tax revenues
rose before the country’s significant per capita GDP growth in the 2000s.

Of course, there are exceptions to this. Saudi Arabia, and other wealthy
oil exporters (UAE, Kuwait, Brunei) have lower ratios simply because
they do not need to fund government expenditure through taxation.

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