There are nations on this earth that tax their citizens far moreheavily than the U.S. does. The top spots on the Organization forEconomic Cooperation and Development's (OECD's) rankings of taxrevenue as a percentage of gross domestic product in 2017 were heldby France (46.2 percent), Denmark (46 percent), Belgium (44.6percent), Sweden (44 percent), and Finland (43.3 percent).

The U.S. tax burden was 27.1 percent of GDP, ranking it 31stamong the 36 members of the OECD, the club of the world's affluentdemocracies. That 27.1 percent includes state and local taxes, andit doesn't factor in the tax cuts signed into law by PresidentDonald Trump in December 2017.

I have trotted out these OECD tax statistics several times overthe past few years, mainly because I like trotting out statistics,but also to temper Trump's repeated claims that U.S. taxes areinordinately high. Lately, though, a lot of the talk about taxeshas been coming from Democratic politicians hoping to raise them tofund programs they favor, with the increases in most cases targetedat the very wealthy. Which makes this an opportune time, I think,to review how the countries that raise lots more money from taxesthan the U.S. go about raising it.

To start, here is how the U.S. stacks up against 15 other OECDnations—the biggest economies plus our neighbors plus somecountries (the Nordic ones, mainly) with a reputation for combininghigh taxes with healthy growth—in personal income tax revenue as ashare of GDP.

The U.S. gets much more revenue from personal income taxes thanis the OECD norm. But yeah, Finland, Sweden, and especially Denmarkbring in even more as a share of GDP. How do they do it? Withhigher top income tax rates than the U.S., definitely. But also byassessing those top rates on a much wider swath of taxpayers thanis the case in the U.S.

Smaller numbers in the right-hand column imply income taxsystems that are less progressive—“progressive,” in this case,meaning that rates rise as incomes go higher. In Denmark, the topincome tax bracket of 55.8% kicks in at an income of just $77,730this year. In the U.S., the threshold for the top federal rate of37% is $510,300. Interestingly, the countries with even moreprogressive income tax systems than the U.S. (France, Japan, andMexico) raise substantially less from personal income taxes thanthe U.S. does.

Payroll taxes for retirement savings, health care, unemploymentinsurance, and other purposes are usually less progressive thanincome taxes. Some high-tax countries rely quite heavily on them,too. The U.S. less so.

The clearest differentiator between the U.S. and the high-taxcountries, though, may be taxes on goods and services. All the OECDcountries except the U.S. have a value-added levy that taxes goodsand services at every stage of production. The relatively modestconsumption tax revenues in the U.S. come from state and localsales taxes and federal excise taxes on fuel, plane tickets,tobacco, alcohol, and so forth.

Lots of economists like consumption taxes because they don'tdiscourage work and investment. The taxes do, however, tend towardregressivity. Poor people spend a larger share of their income ongoods and services than wealthy people do.

How about taxing wealth directly? There are so few outrightwealth taxes in the world (France had one but ditched it as of lastyear) that the OECD instead tracks taxes on property, whichincludes taxes on net wealth but also taxes on real estate, giftsand inheritances, and financial and capital transactions.

U.S. property taxes are mostly taxes on real estate. At 4percent of GDP, they aren't huge, but in some high-tax localities,they really add up. These are wealth taxes that weigh more heavilyon the middle class than the rich because, as my Bloomberg Opinioncolleague Noah Smith pointed out last month, “rich people hold mostof their wealth in stocks instead of houses.” Still, they arewealth taxes, and they're higher in the U.S. than in all but twoOECD countries, and much higher than in the high-tax Nordiccountries.

Overall, the countries that raise lots more tax revenue than theU.S. tend to have higher top income tax rates but less progressiveincome tax systems and, it seems, less progressive taxationoverall. Their systems help the poor and counteract incomeinequality more through spending than through tax policy. On thewhole, this has worked out pretty well. “There is no clear net GDPcost of high tax-based social spending on GDP,” economist Peter H.Lindert concluded after surveying the long-run evidence from OECDcountries in 2003. One of the main reasons for this, he continued,was that “the tax strategies of high-budget welfare states are morepro-growth and less progressive than has been realized.”

The U.S. does have some tax leeway that smaller Europeancountries don't. It's more of a hassle for rich people to leave theU.S. to escape taxation than to leave, say, Finland. And the U.S.is such a huge market that businesses and investors will want to behere whatever the tax structure. Also, there may be good reasonsfor levying new taxes on the very rich other than raising lots ofmoney. But if raising lots of money is the goal, the tax approachthat seems to have worked the best elsewhere involves making mosteverybody pay.

Justin Fox isa Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering business. He wasthe editorial director of Harvard Business Review and wrote forTime, Fortune and American Banker. He is the author of “The Myth ofthe Rational Market.”

Copyright 2019 Bloomberg. All rightsreserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten,or redistributed.