Malta had the second highest increase in the tax-to-GDP ratio in the EU since 2000, Eurostat, the EU statistics agency, said today.

It said the highest increases were observed in Cyprus (from 30.0% to 41.6%) followed by Malta (from 28.2% to 34.7%).

The largest falls were recorded in Slovakia, where the overall tax burden dropped from 34.1% in 2000 to 29.4% in 2007, and Finland (from 47.2% to 43.0%).

Eurostat said the overall tax-to-GDP ratio in the EU27 was 39.8% in 2007, a slight increase from 39.7% in 2006. The EU27 tax ratio, which stood at 40.6% in 2000, fell to 38.9% by 2004 and then started to rise.

In comparison with the rest of the world, the EU27 tax ratio remains generally high, exceeding those of the USA and Japan by some 12 percentage points. However, the tax burden varies significantly between Member States, ranging in 2007 from less than 30% in Romania and Slovakia (both 29.4%) and Lithuania (29.9%), to a little less than 50% in Denmark (48.7%) and Sweden (48.3%)

The average implicit tax rate on labour, was unchanged in the EU27 at 34.4% in 2007 compared with 2006, after having declined steadily from 35.9% in 2000. Among the Member States, the implicit tax rate on labour ranged in 2007 from 20.1% in Malta, 24.0% in Cyprus and 25.7% in Ireland to 44.0% in Italy, 43.1% in Sweden and 42.3% in Belgium.

Continuing an upward trend that started in 2002, the average implicit tax rate on consumption in the EU27 increased marginally, from 22.0% in 2006 to 22.2% in 2007. Implicit tax rates on consumption were highest in 2007 in Denmark (33.7%), Sweden (27.8%) and Hungary (27.1%), and lowest in Greece (15.4%), Spain (15.9%) and Italy (17.1%).

In the EU27, the average implicit tax rate on capital for the Member States for which data are available was 28.7% in 2007. The highest implicit tax rates on capital were recorded in Cyprus (50.5%), Denmark (44.9%) and the United Kingdom (42.7%), and the lowest in Estonia (10.3%), Lithuania (12.1%) and Latvia (14.6%).