NO.018

OECD CORRECTS ITS REPORT

The OECD has today placed the following correction to its report Taxing Wages

2004 on its website

www.oecd.org:

Errata: Please note that the figures given for Australia

on page 183 (Taxes on the average production worker as a percentage of labour

cost) do not provide a consistent series as they only include payroll tax

from 2002 onwards. Accordingly, the statement on page 182 that there has been

an increase in the taxes on a production worker in Australia is incorrect.

The tax wedge for the average production worker in Australia actually declined

by 0.8 percentage points between 1996 and 2003 (see:OECD

Study Shows Tax Wedges Continue to Fall). The

Australian authorities are working with the OECD Secretariat to resolve this

issue for future publications.

Those news outlets that reported that there had been an increase in tax on

the average worker in Australia now have the opportunity to correct the record.

CANBERRA

17 March 2005