The gross-to-net pay gap across 20 countries — and why the ranking might surprise you
If you assumed the Nordic countries top every "highest taxed" list, the data tells a more nuanced story. Using OECD Taxing Wages data for a single person with no children earning the national average wage, here's how much of a paycheck disappears in income tax and employee-side social contributions before it reaches your bank account, across the 20 countries we track:
Switzerland takes the smallest personal bite, at 18.1%. Sweden — often assumed to be one of the highest-tax countries in the world — comes in at just 22.6%, barely above the UK (23.1%) and Estonia (23.3%). Belgium and Germany sit at the other end, at 39.6% and 38.7% respectively, with Denmark (35.3%) and Austria (32.5%) not far behind.
The Sweden result looks like a contradiction until you understand what this number actually measures: NPATR counts only what's deducted directly from an employee's own paycheck — income tax plus the employee's share of social contributions. It deliberately excludes what the employer pays on top. Sweden, like France, funds much of its welfare state through employer-side payroll charges that never appear on an employee's payslip at all — so the system's true cost is much higher than this number alone suggests, it's just invisible to the person receiving the salary. This is exactly why we show the employee-facing figure separately: it's the one number that directly answers "what will actually land in my account," even though it's not the whole tax-burden picture.
| # | Country | Personal tax rate |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Switzerland | 18.1% |
| 2 | Sweden | 22.6% |
| 3 | UK | 23.1% |
| 4 | Estonia | 23.3% |
| 5 | Australia | 23.5% |
| 6 | Spain | 23.5% |
| 7 | USA | 24.3% |
| 8 | Poland | 24.4% |
| 9 | Portugal | 24.9% |
| 10 | Ireland | 25.1% |
| 11 | Canada | 25.6% |
| 12 | Netherlands | 27.9% |
| 13 | France | 28.0% |
| 14 | Norway | 28.1% |
| 15 | Italy | 28.6% |
| 16 | Finland | 30.7% |
| 17 | Austria | 32.5% |
| 18 | Denmark | 35.3% |
| 19 | Germany | 38.7% |
| 20 | Belgium | 39.6% |
Data last verified: September 29, 2026 (reference year 2025).
One note: the 'average wage' behind these tax-wedge brackets comes from OECD Taxing Wages, which is usually somewhat lower than the separate OECD average-wage figure used elsewhere on this site (explained in our purchasing-power article) — worth knowing if you compare the two.
Run your own numbers, for your own country and salary, with our net salary calculator — this table shows one reference point (a single person on the national average wage), but the actual rate you pay depends on where your salary sits relative to that average.
Figures: reference year 2025, from the datasets described on our methodology page.