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Germany has defended its title, albeit a questionable one: that of the top tax rider.
In no other industrialized country do so many taxes and social contributions deduct from the gross income of a childless single.
The average burden of an average earner was 38.9 percent last year.
With this, Germany again displaced Belgium (38.4 percent) and Lithuania (35.8 percent) to the other places.
This is shown by the current annual evaluation by the industrialized countries organization OECD.
The positive news for all single people is: The average load fell in the corona crisis year - from 39.3 percent to 38.9 percent.
However, the average pollution of all 37 nations examined fell more significantly, namely from 25.9 percent to 24.9 percent.
The figures mean that a single with an average income in this country is left with 61.1 percent of his gross wage, while the OECD average is 75.1 percent.
Source: WORLD infographic
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The international comparison provides the parties with some material for discussion in the Bundestag election campaign.
Some will see further arguments for blanket tax cuts in this, while others will rather refer to the part of the OECD study that deals with the burden on households with children and promotes a new family policy.
The OECD experts also looked at the amount of taxes and social security contributions that burden family incomes.
The picture looks different: A married sole earner with two children in Germany in 2020, including tax breaks and transfer payments, had a total burden of 21.3 percent.
German tax law promotes the classic division of labor
In this group, Germany ranks just above the OECD average, which is 19.9 percent.
In other countries, significantly more money goes from family income.
In Lithuania, Denmark and Finland, for example, the burden of taxes and social security contributions for single-income marriages with two children is more than 30 percent.
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Some campaigners are likely to emphasize the differences between those families in which only one partner earns money and those in which both work.
In a family with two children in which one partner works full-time and the other has a two-thirds job, Germany ranks in the top group with a tax burden of 31 percent, as is the case with singles - only in Lithuania, Belgium and Denmark are double-income families even more burdened.
The OECD average is a comparatively low 21.7 percent.
The figures draw attention to the splitting of spouses, which is being put up for discussion by several parties for the period after the federal election in September.
In the case of the SPD, for example, it is said that the beneficiaries are “mainly single-income couples with high incomes”, which means that current tax law promotes the classic division of labor between men and women.
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For newly concluded marriages, the SPD wants to change the splitting of spouses just like the Greens.
Instead, both parties want households with children to be better off with a basic child benefit.
The FDP, on the other hand, is sticking to the splitting process, but with it there should be higher allowances for families and thus reduce the tax burden.
According to the OECD figures for the peak burden on households in an international comparison, income tax is less responsible in Germany.
If you only look at the average tax burden on single income, Germany only ranks tenth with 18.8 percent.
The social contributions, which amount to 20.1 percent, are primarily responsible for the first overall place.
The OECD average here is just 9.7 percent.
Source: WORLD infographic
That means that when it comes to relief, politics should start with social contributions rather than taxes.
Whereby one can cause the other: If the social coffers lack money, they are already being replenished today with billions in taxes.
In other countries, the burdens are lower, but the social security is nowhere near as good - one example is the United States, where the gross income of an average single person is reduced to just 7.7 percent for social contributions and the OECD tax burden for one Single with 16.8 percent is below that in Germany.
That could of course change with the social reforms and tax increases announced by US President Joe Biden.
Critics of the annual OECD survey see the distinction between taxes and social contributions as problematic.
In some countries social security contributions are taxes, in others insurance contributions.
The OECD does not calculate the average tax and contribution burden of the population, but only the burden of wage tax and social contributions for selected model households, complains Stefan Bach, an expert on tax and distribution issues at the German Institute for Economic Research (DIW).
In addition, only standard deductions such as employee allowance, basic allowance and child allowance would be taken into account, other possible deductions such as distance allowance and double housekeeping were not included in the calculations.
Germany is more generous here than other countries.
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Even looking at income tax alone does not go far enough from Bach's point of view.
Indirect taxes, such as VAT, were also missing from the OECD accounts.
Germany is not at the top here.
And when it comes to the taxation of capital income and assets, Germany is even a low-tax country.
In addition to the burden of different household types, the OECD experts also looked at the total burden on labor in the member countries - if you also take into account what employers pay into social security.
The total burden on a single income is then 49 percent in Germany.
The overall burden of work is only higher in Belgium, where, at 51.5 percent, more than half of the labor costs go to the state.
The OECD average is 34.6 percent.