Top rates of personal income tax, which were in the order of 60-70% in major OECD countries, fell to around 40% on average by the late 2000s. However, the redistributional effects of tax regimes depend on the percentage of total income actually paid in taxes, the so-called “effective tax rate”. Just prior to the 2008-09 global downturn, effective tax rates of the top percentile group were in the order of 35-38% for a group of typical OECD countries (Australia, Belgium, Canada, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, and Sweden).