Skip to content

Tax Relief for Families in Europe

2 min readBy: Elke Asen

Most countries provide taxA tax is a mandatory payment or charge collected by local, state, and national governments from individuals or businesses to cover the costs of general government services, goods, and activities. relief to families with children—typically through targeted tax breaks that lower income taxes. While all European OECD countries provide tax relief for families, its extent varies substantially across countries.

One way to measure targeted tax relief for families is to compare the tax burdens on labor of a family with one earner and two children and a single worker without children, both earning the same pretax income. Larger differences imply more extensive tax relief for families.

The tax burden on labor—or “tax wedgeA tax wedge is the difference between total labor costs to the employer and the corresponding net take-home pay of the employee. It is also an economic term that refers to the economic inefficiency resulting from taxes. ”—is defined as the difference between an employer’s total labor cost of an employee and the employee’s net disposable income. In other words, it is the sum of income taxes and payroll taxA payroll tax is a tax paid on the wages and salaries of employees to finance social insurance programs like Social Security, Medicare, and unemployment insurance. Payroll taxes are social insurance taxes that comprise 24.8 percent of combined federal, state, and local government revenue, the second largest source of that combined tax revenue. es of a worker earning the average wage in a country, divided by the total labor cost of this worker.

Tax relief for families in Europe 2020, One way to measure targeted tax relief for families is to compare the tax burdens on labor of a family with one earner and two children and a single worker without children, both earning the same pretax income. The tax burden on labor, or “tax wedge,” is defined as the difference between an employer’s total labor cost of an employee and the employee’s net disposable income. In other words, it is the sum of income taxes and payroll taxes of a worker earning the average wage in a country, divided by the total labor cost of this worker.

In the European countries covered, a family with one earner and two children faced on average a tax burden of 29.6 percent in 2019. The average tax burden of a single worker without children was 40.1 percent, 10.5 percentage points higher than a family.

Luxembourg had the largest disparity between the two tax wedges of all countries covered, with a 21.1 percentage-point difference between its 38.4 percent tax wedge for single workers and 17.3 percent tax wedge for families.

Turkey had the smallest gap with tax burdens of 37.5 percent on families and 39.1 percent on singles, a difference of only 1.7 percentage points.

Tax Burden on Labor of Families and Single Workers Earning a Nation’s Average Wage in European OECD Countries, 2019
Single person, no children One-earner married couple, 2 children Percentage-point difference
Austria (AT) 47.9% 33.7% -14.2
Belgium (BE) 52.2% 36.5% -15.8
Czech Republic (CZ) 43.9% 26.6% -17.3
Denmark (DK) 35.4% 25.2% -10.3
Estonia (EE) 37.2% 27.5% -9.8
Finland (FI) 41.9% 37.5% -4.4
France (FR) 46.7% 36.8% -9.9
Germany (DE) 49.4% 34.3% -15.0
Greece (GR) 40.8% 37.8% -3.0
Hungary (HU) 44.6% 29.6% -15.0
Iceland (IS) 33.1% 21.6% -11.6
Ireland (IE) 33.2% 17.9% -15.3
Italy (IT) 48.0% 39.2% -8.8
Latvia (LV) 42.6% 32.4% -10.1
Lithuania (LT) 37.2% 29.0% -8.2
Luxembourg (LU) 38.4% 17.3% -21.1
Netherlands (NL) 37.3% 32.3% -4.9
Norway (NO) 35.7% 32.1% -3.6
Poland (PL) 35.6% 17.7% -17.9
Portugal (PT) 41.0% 29.4% -11.6
Slovak Republic (SK) 41.9% 31.1% -10.8
Slovenia (SI) 43.6% 28.5% -15.1
Spain (ES) 39.5% 34.2% -5.3
Sweden (SE) 42.7% 37.4% -5.2
Switzerland (CH) 22.3% 9.9% -12.4
Turkey (TR) 39.1% 37.5% -1.7
United Kingdom (GB) 30.9% 26.3% -4.5
Average 40.1% 29.6% -10.5

Source: OECD, “Taxing Wages,” April 2020, https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DataSetCode=AWCOMP#.

Stay informed on the tax policies impacting you.

Subscribe to get insights from our trusted experts delivered straight to your inbox.

Subscribe
Share