Comments Guidelines


Sunday, December 11, 2011

Cost of Tax Evasion Estimated at Over $3 Trillion Annually





US                     14.6                          8.6%                           26.9%                   337.3
Brazil                    2.1                       39.0%                           34.4%                   280.1
Italy                      2.1                       27.0%                           43.1%                   238.7
Russia                  1.5                       43.8%                            34.1%                   221.0
Germany              3.3                       16.0%                            40.6%                   215.0
France                 2.6                       15.0%                            44.6%                   171.2
Japan                   5.5                       11.0%                            28.3%                   171.1
China                   5.9                       12.7%                            18.0%                   134.4
UK                      2.2                       12.5%                            38.9%                   109.2
Spain                   1.4                       22.5%                            33.9%                   107.4




  1. Since we've heard so much about Greece and their tax evasion, do you have the percentage for that country? I wonder if it is higher than Spain or Italy. The figure for Russia is interesting. I wonder if it is part of the political problems we are now seeing over there.

  2. Do you have the figures for Greece? With all the concern about tax evasion in that country I wonder what their percentage is. The figure for Russia is also very interesting.

  3. According to the report, Greece loses $29.4 billion a year in tax evasion, which is almost 10% of its $304.9 billion gross domestic product. The Greek shadow economy is 27.5% of GDP, just barely larger than Italy's shadow economy. Taxation is 35.1% of GDP while government spending is 46.8% of GDP, so the tax lost to tax evasion could just about fill up the 11.7% of GDP annual budget deficit.

    You also mentioned Russia. If you multiply the shadow economy (43.8%) times the tax rate (34.1%), we find that it loses 14.9% of GDP to tax evasion. So I would definitely say that is part of their economic problem.