The tax burden in Portugal increased to 34.5% of GDP – the Observer

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) disclosed that the tax burden increased by 0.3 percentage points in Portugal in 2015 compared to 2014, reaching 34.5% of the GDP, which puts the country on the 16.Th position.

according To the report of the revenue statistics of the various Member States of the OECD, released on Wednesday, the ratio of taxes paid compared to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in Portugal "increased by 0.3 percentage points, from 34.2 per cent in 2014 to 34.5% in 2015", an increase that was only 0.1 points in the set of OECD countries in this period.

"Since 2000, the ratio of taxes to GDP in Portugal increased from 31.1% to 34.5%," according to the document.

Comparing with the other OECD countries, Portugal is the 16.No country with a tax burden higher, above that of Spain (33,8%) and Ireland (23.6 per cent), but below that of Greece (a 36.8%) and Italy (43,3%).

the countries with The highest tax burden are Denmark (46,6%), France (45,5%) and Belgium (44,8%) and, on the opposite side of the table, are Mexico (17.4 percent) and Chile (20,7%), according to the OECD.

As to the composition, the OECD concludes that the revenues from taxes on value-added tax (VAT) have more relevance in Portugal (representing 25% of the total tax burden) than in the OECD (20%), but that the weight of taxes on personal income (IRS) is the lowest in Portugal (22%) than in the OECD (24%).

the weight of taxes on corporate income (IRC) is slightly lower in Portugal (8%) than the OECD average (9%), as well as the property taxes (4% in Portugal as against 6% in the OECD), while the social contribution is aligned (26%).

The OECD report further highlights the "increase of 0.9% percentage points between 2009 and 2014" of the tax burden in 35 economies in the organization, "reversing the decline, 33.8% to 32.4%, [registered] between 2007 and 2009".

The largest increase of the tax burden between 2014 and 2015, occurred in Mexico (+2.3 points) and Turkey (up 1.3 points), but were registered "substantial increases" in Estonia, in Greece, in Hungary and in Slovakia (more than one percentage point).

By contrast, the largest declines in the tax burden between these two years were observed in Ireland (-5,1 points, "due to the growth exceptionally high GDP in 2015"), in Denmark (-3 points) and in Iceland (-1,8 points).

If you extend the period of comparison, the OECD concludes that "the individual countries show trends in widely disparate": for example, the tax burden from Norway fell by four percentage points between 2007 and 2015, but Greece increased by 5.6 points in the same interval of time.