Nationmaster: Taxation as % of GDP in OECD countries

As the President starts assembling a bipartisan commission to deal with the deficit, and the Republicans continue to live under the misapprehension that cutting taxes will be all it takes to balance the budget, I thought it was instructive to post some international statistics from Nationmaster. My elementary HTML skills mean my table is not as nice as theirs, but the point is clear. Most other OECD countries tax their citizens at higher rates than the U.S. Some countries tax at much higher rates. And the U.S. is the most militaristic country of all those below: we probably spend more than all the others combined on defense and we engaged in one clearly unjust war and a complete boondoggle in the last 10 years (as well as one war that may well be a just one).

Total taxation as % of GDP in OECD Countries

Country	Amount
Sweden	54.6%
Denmark	48.8%
Finland	46.9%
Belgium	45.6%
France	45.3%
Austria	43.7%
Italy	42.0%
Netherlands	41.4%
Norway	40.3%
Germany	37.9%
United Kingdom	37.4%
Canada	35.8%
Switzerland	35.7%
New Zealand	35.1%
Australia	31.5%
Ireland	31.1%
United States	29.6%
Japan	27.1%