Methodology & data sources
Transparency is the core of our E-E-A-T: this page documents where every figure comes from, exactly what the tax wedge measures, the numbers we derive, and the important limits of all of it. NetPayMap covers 38 OECD countries across 6 regions. The underlying data is the OECD Taxing Wages 2023 data year, fetched on 2026-06-29.
Important: the tax wedge here models a representative average worker at 100% of each country's average wage — it is not your personal tax, and this site is general information, not tax advice. Your real burden depends on your income level, brackets, allowances, family status, region and circumstances. Always verify with the relevant tax authority and a qualified professional before relying on a figure.
What the tax wedge is
The OECD tax wedge is the difference between the total cost of employing a worker and that worker's net take-home pay, expressed as a percentage of total labour cost. In other words: of everything an employer spends to employ someone, what share is taken by taxes on labour before it reaches the worker? It bundles three things:
- Personal income tax — reported by the OECD as a percentage of gross wage earnings.
- Employee social-security contributions — the worker's own mandatory contributions, as a percentage of gross wage.
- Employer social-security contributions — the employer's mandatory contributions, as a percentage of total labour cost. These never appear on the payslip but are counted in the wedge.
Net cash transfers (such as child benefits) are subtracted where they apply, which is why family households generally show a lower wedge than single workers. The OECD-wide average tax wedge for a single average worker in our snapshot is 34.9%.
The figures we publish per country
- Total tax wedge (% of labour cost) — the headline measure.
- Personal income tax and employee social security (% of gross wage).
- Employer social security (% of labour cost).
- Net personal average tax rate (% of gross) — income tax plus employee contributions; 100% minus this is the share of gross the worker keeps.
- Gross labour cost, gross earnings and net income in USD PPP (purchasing-power-parity adjusted, so they are roughly comparable across countries).
We publish all of these for two household types: a single person with no children and a one-earner married couple with two children, both at 100% of the average wage.
How we get the data (no fabrication)
A small script (scripts/fetch-data.mjs) pulls the figures once from the
keyless OECD Data Explorer SDMX-JSON API (dataflow OECD.CTP.TPS,DSD_TAX_WAGES_COMP@DF_TW_COMP,1.0), normalizes them into a
committed JSON snapshot, and the site is built from that snapshot — there is no live API call at build or
page-load time. Every number is real OECD data; where a value is genuinely missing we show "—" rather
than invent one. Note that some countries can show a 0% wedge when an average worker's earnings fall below
that country's tax and contribution thresholds in the OECD model (Colombia is the current example).
Derived figures we calculate
- Rankings simply sort countries by one published figure (e.g. tax wedge descending).
- "Keeps X% of gross" is 100% minus the net personal average tax rate.
- The labour-cost bar rescales income tax and employee contributions (reported on a gross-wage base) onto total labour cost so the four segments — net pay, income tax, employee SSC, employer SSC — sum to 100%.
- The estimator applies a country's average-worker rates flat to a salary you enter. Because it uses average — not marginal — rates, it does not reflect your exact bracket; it is a directional model only.
- "Similar tax wedge" peers are the countries with the closest single-worker tax wedge to the one you are viewing.
Data sources
| Source | Use | License / terms |
|---|---|---|
| OECD Taxing Wages — comparative country indicators (SDMX) | annual | CC BY 4.0 |
| OECD Taxing Wages 2024 (annual report) | annual | CC BY 4.0 |
Data: OECD Taxing Wages, comparative country indicators. OECD data has been openly licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0) by default since 1 July 2024, with commercial use permitted; we credit "OECD Taxing Wages" as required.
Limitations
- Average worker, not you. Every figure models a standard worker at the average wage. Your bracket, deductions, region and family change the real number.
- Labour taxes only. The wedge ignores VAT/GST, property, capital and other taxes — it is not a measure of a country's total tax burden.
- One year, one snapshot. Rates and the OECD's data year move; budgets and reforms change the wedge annually. This is the 2023 data year.
- Employer-incidence debate. Whether employer contributions ultimately fall on workers (via lower wages) is an economic question the headline figure does not settle.
Treat every figure as general information to be verified with the primary source and a professional. This is not tax, legal or financial advice. See our disclaimer.
Last updated: 2026-06-29