Today’s tax day, and with everyone around us complaining about high taxes, we wondered how the U.S. measures up to other OECD countries. Turns out, most Americans have a significantly lower income tax burden than residents of most other developed countries — but does that mean Americans are happier? We found each country’s Human Development Index (the UN’s attempt at measuring quality of life) and attached it to the right-side axis, connecting each set of bars with its corresponding ranking. (Of course, a high HDI rating doesn’t necessarily lead directly to happiness, but it is an indicator.)

The chaos of the connecting lines is indicative of the disconnect between low tax rates and high quality of life; in fact, there seems to be a link between high tax rates and high quality of life. Click to see full view:

For more information on how the OECD collected its data, click here or read this article. For the 2005 HDI rankings, click here.