Labour taxes drive OECD tax revenues to record high in 2024

Higher revenues from labour taxes drove tax revenues among OECD countries to their highest-ever level in 2024, according to a new OECD report.

Revenue Statistics 2025 shows that the average tax-to-GDP ratio across OECD countries reached 34.1% of GDP in 2024, a year-on-year increase of 0.3 percentage points (p.p.) following two consecutive years of decline. Among the 36 countries for which preliminary data is available, tax-to-GDP ratios ranged from 18.3% in Mexico to 45.2% in Denmark in 2024.

​OECD (2025), Revenue Statistics 2025: Disentangling Personal Income Tax Revenue in OECD Countries, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/3a264267-en.​

The tax-to-GDP ratio increased in 22 of the 36 countries between 2023 and 2024, declined in 13 and was unchanged in one (Figure 1). The largest increases in 2024 were observed in Latvia (2.4 p.p.) and Slovenia (1.9 p.p.), primarily driven by higher social security contributions (SSCs). Colombia recorded the largest decrease (of -2.2 p.p.)

SCs rose as a share of GDP in 26 of the 36 countries with available data between 2023 and 2024. Over the same period, revenues from personal income tax (PIT) increased in 28 out of 36 countries as governments raised effective tax rates on labour in response to short- and long-term spending pressures.

The report shows that PIT has been one of the main drivers of overall tax revenue growth across OECD countries over the longer term. Between 2011 and 2023 (the most recent year for which final data is available for all 38 OECD countries), PIT revenue increased by 0.9 p.p. on average across the OECD, out of an overall increase of 1.8 p.p.

For the first time, Revenue Statistics includes a Special Feature that breaks down PIT revenue according to different sources of individual income for 29 countries. It shows that employed-labour income was the main source of PIT revenue in all of these countries in 2023. However, in most countries, the share of employed-labour income in overall PIT revenue declined between 2011 and 2023 while the shares of income from capital and from self-employment increased.

To access the Revenue Statistics 2025 report, data, overview and country notes, visit Revenue Statistics 2025 | OECD.