ECONOMY

Heavy tax burden in Greece

The tax burden borne by wage earners in Greece last year was among the highest in the world, according to data presented recently by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). The Paris-based OECD said married couples with a single wage-earner in Greece were hit in 2008 with an average tax burden of 42.7 percent, the second highest among its 30 member countries. Hungary took top spot with a tax burden of 43.9 percent while the average stood at 27.3 percent. The tax burden takes into account the difference between labor costs to an employer and the net take-home pay of the employee. France followed Greece in third place, followed by Belgium and Sweden. «For a single-earner married couple with two children on average earnings, the tax burden decreased [from 2007] not only strongly in Poland and Turkey but also in Switzerland by 1.9 percentage points,» OECD said in a statement. The figure for Greece went up marginally from the previous year, data showed.

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