Of the 89 economies that filed 2024 tax figures, the two with the highest tax-to-GDP are lower-middle-income — and the U.S., Switzerland and the UAE rank near the bottom, alongside Somalia

We pulled the most recent tax-to-GDP figure for every economy the World Bank tracks — "Tax revenue (% of GDP)," series GC.TAX.TOTL.GD.ZS, compiled from the IMF's Government Finance Statistics Yearbook. Of the roughly 190 economies in the series, 161 carry a value; their vintages run from 1979 to 2024. To compare like with like we scope every ranking below to the 89 whose latest filing is 2024. The series measures one specific thing. By the World Bank's own definition it counts "compulsory transfers to the central government," and "fines, penalties, and most social security contributions are excluded." It excludes most social security contributions — the payroll taxes that fund social insurance — and it does not include any tax raised by states, provinces, cantons or municipalities. Across the 89 economies filing 2024, the median is 18.0% of GDP; the values run from 0.6% to 35.4%. The two highest are both lower-middle-income: Lesotho at 35.4% and Namibia at 33.9% — each a member of the Southern African Customs Union, whose shared customs-and-excise pool is distributed to member central governments and, by this definition, counts as their tax revenue. Behind them come the expected welfare states, though not as a consecutive run: Denmark (33.4%), New Zealand (29.5%), Luxembourg (28.6%), Sweden (27.2%), the United Kingdom (26.9%). The bottom of the same table mixes rich and poor without pattern. The lowest 2024 filing is the United Arab Emirates at 0.6%. Then Somalia (2.2%) and Ethiopia (3.4%) — and, among them, China (7.0%), Saudi Arabia (8.1%), Switzerland (9.5%) and the United States (10.8%). Nine of the 89 fall below 10% of GDP; 30 fall below 15%. Sorted by World Bank income group, the medians barely separate and do not climb in order: low income 11.8% (n=8), upper-middle 16.9% (n=25), lower-middle 18.8% (n=11), high income 21.0% (n=45). Lower-middle sits above upper-middle, and the high-income group alone spans the entire range — from the UAE's 0.6% to Denmark's 33.4%.

Read as a whole, the 2024 table is not a comparable ranking of how heavily governments tax. Where a country lands is shaped by how its revenue is structured — which slice runs through the central books — as much as by how much it raises. ^mmodeled A single measure that seats the United States, Switzerland and Saudi Arabia beside Somalia, and puts two lower-middle-income customs-union members above every Nordic state, is not comparing total tax burden; the ordering turns on fiscal architecture as much as on tax level. ^mmodeled The mechanism is definitional. Because most social security contributions are excluded, much of the payroll taxation that funds large welfare states drops out. Because only central-government tax counts, federations that raise revenue mainly through states and cantons — the U.S., Switzerland, China — record a low central figure that says little about their total. And because the customs pool paid to SACU members lands in their central budgets, it counts here as those governments' tax revenue — a shared regional-trade windfall that helps lift Lesotho and Namibia to the top of the table, not a measure of domestic tax effort. ^mmodeled The verified spine here is the ranking and the definition. That this narrow number is routinely read as overall tax burden is our characterization, not something these figures establish. What they do establish is a scope limit: counting only central-government tax and dropping most social security and all subnational revenue, the series can't be compared across countries as total tax burden — the differences reflect how each government's revenue is structured as much as how much it raises. ^mmodeled

The strongest counter is that the number is not wrong — it is narrow, and correctly so. The customs-pool receipts that lift Lesotho and Namibia genuinely are compulsory transfers to their central governments, so counting them as tax revenue follows the definition exactly. The fault is in the reading, not the data. Second, and more important: a broader measure would likely tell a different story. General-government revenue — central plus subnational plus social contributions — is a wider base on which federations and welfare states necessarily record higher ratios than this central-only series shows; the OECD's Revenue Statistics compile tax-to-GDP on that fuller basis. So "income barely tracks the number" is a property of this narrow central-government series — and a fuller measure, which this piece does not re-derive, would be the place to test whether tax level tracks wealth. ^mmodeled Third, on completeness: even inside 2024 the underlying GFS filings differ in coverage and quality, and for some unitary states central government is most of government — for which the figure is closer to the whole picture than it is for a federation. ^mmodeled

From a finance ministry in Maseru, a 35% ratio is not a boast — it is a dependency, a customs-pool share that swings with regional trade and someone else's imports. From Washington or Bern, 10.8% and 9.5% read low mainly because the filing leaves out the states, cantons and payroll levies where much of the revenue is raised. From Abu Dhabi, 0.6% is what the tax column shows for a government that raises very little of its budget through taxation at all. Three governments, three meanings, one column of numbers. ^mmodeled