Tax deadline day approaches for U.S., but tax bite being felt around the world

American taxpayers struggling to locate the W-2s and calculate their Schedule As as Wednesday’s annual tax deadline approaches can at least take comfort in this: They’re not alone in the world when it comes to figuring how to do their taxes.

The simplicity of a country’s tax code can depend on more than just how its citizens can file. The tax code varies markedly from country to country, but many governments get their policies from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), a clearinghouse for the world industrial nations that has studied ways to optimize the tax system for its 34 member countries.

According to research by KPMG International, an international network of firms providing audit, advisory and tax services, Western Europe carries some of the highest tax rates in the world.

Austria collects and average 50 percent of individual citizen income, but provides a vast range of public services, including publicly funded health care and higher education.

Denmark has one of the highest tax-to-GDP ratio among OECD member with 48.6 percent average in 2013, followed by France with 45 percent and Belgium with 44.6 percent. These numbers represent some countries where taxes are progressive and citizens pay based on what they earn. Those countries also collect a value-added tax imposed throughout the production and sales system.

There is a Danish saying that “Those with the broadest shoulders should bear the heaviest burden.”

In the U.S., experts say the complexity and contradictions taxpayers face are less the fault of the IRS than of Congress and the administration, who give the tax collectors their marching orders.

“The complexity is from legal systems trying to define incomes. Tax laws are piled up year after year after year and it gets messy due to Congress giving the IRS incoherent codes,” said Curtis Dubay, a tax policy analyst at The Heritage Foundation.

The United States currently uses a progressive-rate tax system. According to the Internal Revenue Service, in 2010 Americans who earned greater than $373,650, about 35 percent of their income was collected and those who earned up to $8,375, ten percent was collected.

“In the United States, when everything is said and done the top marginal tax rate is around 46 percent, so this is the federal level and then the state level. It gets high up there,” said Kyle Pomerleau, an economist for the Tax Foundation’s Center for Federal Tax Policy.

While Americans face the burden of collecting their own records and figuring out their own tax bills, the Danish government automatically receives information about pay, interest income and expenses from employers, banks, unemployment agencies and unions. As a result, very little information needs to be provided personally. Often times, it is sufficient for people to check the information in the statements they receive from the government.

France requires that citizens keep track of their own tax information and file with the government accordingly. Mexico does the same, but it has one of the lowest tax-to-GDP ratios along with Chile, Korea and the United States.

“It’s hard to compare taxes to other countries because other countries have entire systems in place,” said Mr. Dubay, “The bigger tax [bill] you have, the more complex it gets.”

Russia and countries formerly occupied by the Soviet Union had overall lower tax rates than the rest of Europe. In 2014, Russia collected a flat tax of 13 percent of individual income tax and Lithuania collected about 15 percent in comparison to the global average of 31.12 percent. For the highest tax bracket in the U.S., the federal government collected about 39.6 percent of personal income in 2014.

Norway has a 27 percent tax rate called a flat tax implemented according to the OECD. All citizens pay the same percentage rate no matter their income, and the rate does not go up for higher earners. Hungary, Estonia, and the Czech Republic has a flat tax rate for all citizens as well.