Labor taxes push OECD tax revenues to record highs in 2024

Higher revenues from labor taxes pushed tax revenues among OECD countries to their highest level ever by 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, increasing year-on-year by 0.3 percentage points (pp) after two consecutive years of decline. Among the 36 countries for which preliminary data is available, the tax-to-GDP ratio ranges from 18.3% in Mexico to 45.2% in Denmark in 2024.

The tax-to-GDP ratio increased in 22 of 36 countries between 2023 and 2024, decreased in 13 countries and remained unchanged in one country (Figure 1). The largest increases in 2024 occurred in Latvia (2.4 pp) and Slovenia (1.9 pp), mainly driven by higher social security contributions (SSC). Colombia recorded the largest decline (-2.2 pp).

SSC contribution to GDP increased in 26 of 36 countries based on available data between 2023 and 2024. Over the same period, revenues from personal income tax (PIT) increased in 28 of 36 countries as governments raised effective tax rates on labor 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 in OECD countries over the long term. Between 2011 and 2023 (the most recent year for which final data are available for 38 OECD countries), PIT revenues increased by an average of 0.9 pp across the OECD, from an overall increase of 1.8 pp

For the first time, Income Statistics includes a Special Feature that breaks down PIT income by multiple sources of individual income across 29 countries. This shows that employed workers’ income was the main source of PIT income in all these countries in 2023. However, in most countries, the share of employed workers’ income in overall PIT income decreased between 2011 and 2023 while the share of income from capital and self-employment increased.
Source: OECD