The notion of tax as a historical category is based by political, social, economic but also on many other occasions. The tax is a form of enforced giving imposed by the state and is the most important instrument revenue collection in each state. The tax system as a whole and the taxation of wages in particular are important factors that influence the international positioning and overall competitiveness of countries. Income tax arises at the time when more and more people realize income which opens the possibility of introducing income as subject of taxation. Income tax is a form which belongs to the most complicated tax forms. The important precondition for its successful collection is a developed economy with high employment, and willingness of taxpayers to cooperate with the tax authorities. The goal of this work is to examine the taxation of income from the work in Czech, Croatia, Italy, Slovenia and the Spain, and analyze and compare their tax wedges. There are few different family types observed and wage levels considering the value of the average annual gross wage earnings. Czech, Croatia, Italy, Slovenia and Spain differ not only in level of average gross wage but also in the overall taxation of wages. Taxes on wages represent a large proportion of labour costs. Taxes on labour, and taxes on wages, provide substantial revenue for government budgets. In this work is an overview of the personal income tax systems and social security contribution rates is presented, followed by the calculation of taxes and consequently tax wedges for different gross wage levels for each country.