In every country the tax system is unique and there are many tax types. The goal of this work is to examine the taxation of income from the work in Croatia, Italy, Spain, Ireland and the Netherlands, and analyze and compare their tax wedges. For this purpose, there are few different family types observed and different wage levels considering the value of the average annual gross wage earnings. Furthermore, the tax on income in Croatia and its changes in the period 2008 – 2015 have been analysed in detail. The overall results show that Italy has the biggest tax wedges among observed countries. Only the tax wedge from a taxpayer with two children is smaller than the respective one in Spain and Croatia. Spain has the second biggest tax wedge for each observed family type. Croatia is in most cases ranked in the middle, followed by the Netherlands. Ireland is distinguished by specific values of tax wedges, in which even the case of negative tax wedge is possible, which is the result of high cash transfers from the state to single parents with two children and 67 per cent of the average earnings. The changes in the taxation of income in Croatia occur almost every year. Comparing 2009 and 2010 in which the specific tax on salary was collected with the year 2008, it is evident that the tax wedge increased no matter of the observed value of the annual gross wage. 2013 and 2015 brought the decrease in the tax wedge. The largest tax burden bear high-income individuals and in 2009 and 2010 their expenses towards the state were bigger then the part of income that remains to them, that is, the total taxes and social security contributions to the state represent bigger portion of labour costs then the take-home pay share.