Tax Freedom Day For Workers in The European Union
A 2010 study published in L'Anglophone, a Brussels newspaper, compared the tax burdens of "Average Joes" in each of the 27 EU member states and projected the Tax Freedom Day for workers earning a typical wage. Income taxes, social security contributions (by the employee and the employer) and projected VAT contributions were included in the calculations.
Regarding the discrepancy between their calculation of August 3 as the typical Belgian worker's Tax Freedom Day and that of PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PWC), L'Anglophone's authors wrote: " figures count revenue from all taxes (including those on corporate profits, petrol, cigarettes, &c.) and thus present a more complete picture of the country’s total tax burden," adding that it is "an average applied to all Belgians – not all Belgian workers; in 2008, less than half of Belgium’s population (4.99 million working out of 10.67 million citizens) was legally working. Consequently, a huge share of Belgium’s tax burden is borne by the working population."
| Country | Day of year | % burden | Date of year |
|---|---|---|---|
| Austria | 191 | 52.2% | 10 July |
| Belgium | 215 | 58.5% | 3 August |
| Bulgaria | 145 | 39.5% | 25 May |
| Cyprus | 72 | 19.4% | 13 March |
| Czech Rep. | 165 | 44.9% | 14 June |
| Denmark | 168 | 45.7% | 17 June |
| Estonia | 150 | 40.7% | 30 May |
| Finland | 166 | 45.2% | 15 June |
| France | 207 | 56.4% | 26 July |
| Germany | 200 | 54.6% | 19 July |
| Greece | 164 | 44.6% | 13 June |
| Hungary | 218 | 59.4% | 6 August |
| Ireland | 117 | 31.9% | 27 April |
| Italy | 169 | 46.0% | 18 June |
| Latvia | 161 | 43.7% | 10 June |
| Lithuania | 167 | 45.4% | 16 June |
| Luxembourg | 135 | 36.8% | 15 May |
| Malta | 99 | 26.8% | 9 April |
| Netherlands | 184 | 50.2% | 03 Jul |
| Poland | 160 | 43.6% | 9 June |
| Portugal | 150 | 40.9% | 30 May |
| Romania | 178 | 48.6% | 27 June |
| Slovakia | 167 | 45.5% | 16 June |
| Slovenia | 164 | 44.7% | 13 June |
| Spain | 136 | 37.0% | 16 May |
| Sweden | 181 | 49.4% | 30 June |
| United Kingdom | 134 | 36.3% | 13 May |
Read more about this topic: Tax Freedom Day
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“Change of fashion is the tax levied by the industry of the poor on the vanity of the rich.”
—Sébastien-Roch Nicolas De Chamfort (1741–1794)
“Freedom is not an ideal, it is not even a protection, if it means nothing more than freedom to stagnate, to live without dreams, to have no greater aim than a second car and another television set.”
—Adlai Stevenson (1900–1965)
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—Pearl S. Buck (1892–1973)
“... work is only part of a man’s life; play, family, church, individual and group contacts, educational opportunities, the intelligent exercise of citizenship, all play a part in a well-rounded life. Workers are men and women with potentialities for mental and spiritual development as well as for physical health. We are paying the price today of having too long sidestepped all that this means to the mental, moral, and spiritual health of our nation.”
—Mary Barnett Gilson (1877–?)
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—Victor Hugo (1802–1885)
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—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)