A leading research paper has found that the Hungarian tax burden has declined by almost 9 percent since 2010, the highest reduction in Europe.
The European Policy Information Center has been studying the tax burden of average workers in all 28 EU member states and is renowned in the finance industry for its findings.
The 2017 Tax Burden study by the Institut économique Molinari measures the tax and social security burdens on individual employees earning typical salaries in each of the 28 Member States.
EPIC states that the three EU laggards on taxation are France, Belgium and Austria. With respective real tax rates of 57.41, 56.74 and 54.28 percent, these citizens are the last in the EU to celebrate their “Tax Freedom Day”. Cyprus, Malta and Ireland are the first countries to celebrate “Tax Freedom Day” on 29 March, 19 April and 26 April, respectively.
A "Tax Freedom Day" is a measure of when an individual or business stops paying tax and starts putting their earnings into their own pocket.
For the third year in a row, the average real tax rate for the typical EU employee has decreased slightly to 44.8 percent. However, this rate remains higher than in 2010, with a general increase of 0.81 percent.
According to the paper, this also means that the average EU employer must spend €185 to provide an employee with €100 of real purchasing power. In seven EU Member States employers must spend more than €200.