July 2017

The purpose of this study is to compare the tax and social security burdens of individual employees earning typical salaries in each of the 28 member states of the European Union and, in doing so, to determine a “tax liberation day” — measuring how much of each year’s work is devoted to paying taxes — for workers in each country.

In addition, the study tracks year‐to‐year trends in the total cost, including taxation, of hiring salaried employees in the EU‐28.