United States income taxes still relatively low

The OECD released some information about income taxes for 2011. It’s hard to know how interesting the information is because all the spreadsheet links in the release are broken. Nonetheless, the release provides this chart, which compares income taxes in the United States to income taxes in the rest of the 34-country OECD:

These numbers represent the percentage of total labor costs being paid to taxes. So that includes direct income taxes, and employee and employer payroll taxes for social insurance programs. That figure is then reduced by the amount of transfers — things like the child tax credit for instance — that individuals receive. As is apparent, the United States still has relatively low labor taxes. Depending on the household type, households in the Unites States pay anywhere from 4.5-8 percent less in labor taxes than the OECD average. Contrary to what you might hear in the popular rhetoric, the US is still a very low tax country.