User:Nick Gardner /Sandbox

The burden of taxation rose between 1985 and 2007 in all of the major OECD countries except Britain (see the first table on the addendum subpage). There are significant exceptions to every other trend, but the OECD's tax database[1] records the following changes in the shares of the components of taxation as occurring in most of its member countries:-

• a fall in the contribution of personal income tax (with exceptions that include Britain and France);
• a rise in the share taken by social security contributions (with exceptions that include France );
• a rise in the share taken by corporate income tax (with exceptions that include all of the larger countries);
• a rise in consumption taxes, accounted or mainly by the spread of VAT to every OECD country except the USA;
• an increase in the proportion of the consumption tax take accounted for by general taxation such as VAT, and a corresponding fall in the share of excise and other specific taxes;
• a reduction the steepness of the increase in tax rates with rising income (with exceptions that include ); and,
• a fall in the highest marginal rates of taxation (with exceptions that include ).