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Sorry America, Your Taxes Aren't High (bloomberg.com)
Americans generally feel they're being over-taxed, especially around this time of the year. But is that really true? An article on Bloomberg investigates: The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development analyzed how 35 countries tax wage-earners, making it possible to compare tax burdens across the world's biggest economies. Each year, the OECD measures what it calls the "tax wedge," the gap between what a worker gets paid and what they actually spend or save. Included are income taxes, payroll taxes, and any tax credits or rebates that supplement worker income. Excluded are the countless other ways that governments levy taxes, such as sales and value-added taxes, property taxes, and taxes on investment income and gains. Guess who came out at the top of the list? No. Not the U.S. At the top are Belgium and France, while workers in Chile and New Zealand are taxed the least. America is in the bottom third.
Smart people like Trump never pay them.
Goodbye America!
I don't think anyone thinks that America's income taxes straight out are that high. But now add in property taxes, which are very significant, social security, etc. That really starts to cover the effective tax rate that you really pay. Then also all the government 'fees' and requirements you pay (required backflow valve inspections at your cost, etc.). Finally, consider what you actually get for it, as we don't get government pensions or healthcare or any kinds of real social service for this money.
So basically they really aren't counting the total real taxes paid, and aren't considering the value of those taxes. Not sure how really useful this comparison is at the end of the day.....
Ted Bundy wasn't evil. I mean, look at Hitler. Now *he* was evil.
Sorry, but you've only been stabbed in an artery, so it's not actually bad compared to this guy was was shot in the face.
f*ck off europoors. We don't want to compete with your 50-60% tax rates.
Sincerely not yours, America
Just because others are taxed higher doesn't mean we aren't over taxed. I'm not saying we are overtaxed, but I think taxes could be lower, or spent more wisely.
"Yes, you're getting forcibly fucked in the ass, but the dick's on the small side, so it's okay."
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
Yes they are, for a non-socialized country they sure are. I pay over 50% in combined taxes, regulatory fees and permits, and still have to shell out more for things like healthcare and get no government benefit because I "make too much." So bite me.
"They said I probly shouldn't fly with just one eye," "I am Bender. Please insert girder."
Since health insurance is required by the government it is a tax, even if you don't want to call it that.
Why is that figure omitted from the comparison?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
it's about what your government provides in return.
If my doctor told me I was in the lower third of people with cancer by percentage of cancer cells to regular cells I probably would consider another doctor...
To me, my rate of cancer would be high enough.
Our taxes may not be high, relatively speaking, but what we get in return for them in this country is still a complete fucking joke.
who only ever posts on two subjects: 1) How all forms of taxation are legally sanctioned theft and tyranny and 2) How she absolutely supports increasing military spending and having the biggest and most powerful military in the world.
Tax the rich. Give me Basic Income.
Free single-payer healthcare, free college for all citizens, France has a higher happiness index because they work fewer hours - all these things their taxes go to. Most of us pay 32% according to their chart, or a third of our income in taxes, so what is this article really showing? And then you have Mitt Romney who famously pays $13%. The richer you are in the USA, the less you pay.
I may be forced in to bankruptcy by medical bills but at least I'm FREE!
For example, if a country's taxes include universal health care, then the equivalent cost to Americans would be taxes + healthcare costs, not just taxes. Same in regards to things like universal access to education (including college), or a better social support net for elders past working age.
Comparing buckets that are supposed to cover differing things and noticing they are differing sizes really doesn't show anything at all. It's a false equivalency that's misleading at best.
LITTLE GIRL: But which cookie will you eat FIRST? C. MONSTER: Me think you have misconception of cookie-eating process.
Now fuck off with you clickbait bullshit.
even though I've got several friends/family who've been saved by them (major medical issues, all hereditary/genetic that would have killed them without a ton of expensive medical care).
It's a knee jerk reaction because I can see the money coming out of my paycheck. The logical part of my brain knows I'm being foolish, and that I've lost way more to falling wages in the IT sector than I've ever lost to taxes. But my lizard brain kicks in every year in April with a mix of anger and fear.
Now, if we had single payer health care I think I could reign the lizard brain in.
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You look at the list of things that they have not included, sales taxes, VATs, property taxes, taxes on investment income, capital gains taxes, etc, it seems like it was not a very good comparison of the tax burdens on people in various countries. It would be much more informative to see some measure of total tax burden, but it was nice to see that they were including state income taxes and payroll taxes (SS and Medicare) in the numbers. Still, it seems like a lot of noise about something that is not telling us the whole story.
Yes, we complain about them.
We are not a Socialist country.
As a non-socialist country, taxes shouldn't be this high.
Forgot to ad the forced insurance payments that are in fact taxes. $900 a month for both my wife and I. I pay more in taxes+the forced insurance payment than the canadians do and they dont have to pay co-pays and their pharmaceuticals are not allowed to be price gouged.
So add that in and now you have the REAL number to compare, because those countries all have universal healthcare for their citizens.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Americans may pay less taxes, but we also get far fewer services.
The closest we have to retirement pensions is Social Security, which is a laughable amount of money. In other countries, you can retire without dedicating a chunk of salary to a gambling scheme---the ubiquitous 401K.
We have no public health care, so we pay higher costs out of our own salaries.
Our public education system is woefully underfunded, and higher education is very costly. It would be nice if everyone smart enough to be a doctor or an engineer could just decide to go to school. Who knows?---it might even help with the health care costs and H1B issues if students didn't have to mortgage their futures just for a chance at those professions.
Let's not forget the embarrassing state of our infrastructure. If a bridge collapses, maybe the media frenzy will force the politicians to do something. Until then, they can rust, rot, or erode away.
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According to the latest ruleset, this post should be modded as Vorpal Flamebait +5.
With no statistical correlation between what the majority of people support or oppose and what policy is passed or blocked; our taxes are quite high.
Perhaps Bloomberg forgot "No taxation without representation". Any amount is too much under this system
No, American taxes (other then the corporate tax) are not high - compared to countries that are run by tyrants or countries that have bought-in to Marxist economics, etc
Yes, American taxes are insanely high - compared to what they historically were and to what our nation's founders intended. The US government is currently taking in more taxes than ever before in its history and consuming a larger share of the nation's wealth than at any time other than during actual existential wars (not counting smaller wars that did not risk the nation and that the nation'selites had no plans to win).
The United States is a designed system. It was engineered by its founders with a specific plan, a design spec, the Constitution. Over the decades, our politicians and judges have mangled that design with various "reforms" like the addition of income taxes, term limits, the direct election of Senators so they are now a super-House and no longer represent the states, etc which allmay be viewd as waivers by which our elites excuse themselves from adhering to the nation's design spec. Any time you operate a designed system outside its specified limits and operating instructions while papering-over it with wavers you are asking for disaster - just ask the crews of the Challenger and the Columbia.
These articles that people keep coming up with that compare the US to other nations on things like healthcare, taxes, military, etc are simply stupid. They are apples-to-oranges comparisons. Different nations are organized differently, have different roles in the world, different types of politics and economics, different cultures and histories, etc. When there is genocide or a major natural disaster in the world, people often ask where the US is. Nobody asks what Paraguay (random example, with no intended disrespect) is going to do about it.
Countries like Belgium are pretty messed up: high taxes on earnings from labor but no taxes on earnings from capital (rich get richer just for being rich).
But, if you look around the world, there are some countries (e.g. Denmark) where poverty is basically a solved problem. In Denmark, essentially no one is trapped desperate poverty - in contrast to countries like the Philippines, or Mexico, or the United States. In Denmark, no one lays awake in the wee hours of the morning how they're going to afford to put their kids through college or not fall into poverty in retirement or not get bankrupted by an expensive medical condition. Everyone has financial security.
And the recipe for financial security is simple: high taxes on the rich and low government corruption with a focus on providing socioeconomic security for ordinary people in the country.
When income tax was created the peoples voice was disconnected and so today a great deal of taxes are used in a manner the taxpayers would not approve of. And there is a problem with Americans have viable and heard voice in their government business. Soooo http://3seas.org/pmwiki-gov/ read, share and with your representatives so they may actually know how to represent you. And know, they don't just work in their respective states but on teams in congress.
Personally I do not approve of my taxes beiung used for US Military Industrial Complex warmongering, nor for supporting the US MIC "in" to warmongering in the middle east (israel - which if israeli's are such good business people, they really don't need so much welfare, from so many sources)
It might help if we actually saw more benefit from our taxes. Improved services and infrastructure, universal healthcare, improvements to education... but instead most of the money I pay in taxes goes to buying more military hardware and endless wars.
But probably not, people are shockingly blind to the benefits of living in a society, believing instead that their rugged individualism would serve them better.
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
Just because you have made your taxes even higher does not make my taxes low.
Why would someone **WANT** to intentionally pay **MORE** tax?
I certainly don't, and I doubt YOU do either.
The problem isn't that just one tax - the payroll/income tax being high.
It's that after you pay that you still have to pay social-security (which isn't operating in the way it commissioned to operate), the medicare, state income tax (in most states), health insurance - which in now a tax per the supreme court, car inspection, vehicle registration, property tax, sales tax at the register, "universal service fee", among other things that creep in we are much more highly taxed than we get credit for when you're only looking at payroll/income.
For a couple of years I was at 53% removed from my paycheck before I got paid, THEN the sales tax etc.... happened.
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
People have been bitching about taxes for millennia, seriously. Even the ancient Greeks bitched about taxes. Same shit, different century. People like to have something to complain about.
In every other facet of society, the focus seems to be on value one gets out of one's dollar. When someone says to someone else they paid "too much" or "not enough" for something it's in relation to the value they're likely to get out of the good or service. And we praise organizations who increase value and keep costs fixed.
Except for taxes for some reason, where the discussion seems centered solely on whether or not one pays "too much" (as though there's some ideal amount of taxes one pays) or "not enough". And somehow in mainstream media (such as this article) the implication is always that we don't pay "enough" tax. But little discussion is made as to whether or not we're getting good value for our tax dollar or whether or not that value can be improved while keeping costs fixed.
What services do citizens get in relation to the taxes they pay? Are they competently managed? Is it easy for the people who need to use the services to be able to do so? Do they focus first on reducing costs or increasing revenue (taxes)? These are the things I'd like to see governments ranked by: not how much one pays but what one gets for what they pay.
Just let the taxes slice in half. Less taxes is better. Fck the socialists.
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"...Excluded are the countless other ways that governments levy taxes, such as sales and value-added taxes, property taxes, and taxes on investment income and gains. Guess who came out at the top of the list? No. Not the U.S.
Guess who made an accurate tax survey? No. Not the OECD.
What the fuck is the point of a survey on tax burden when you're going to exclude a lot of it? My property taxes aren't some meaningless number, paid for by scrounging loose change from underneath my car seat.
This survey is as pointless as asking what megacorps pay in taxes every year...you know, excluding tax loopholes of course...
The fact that other countries have some higher tax rates does not mean that the US rate is low. It just means it is lower than those other countries.
If you have a 5% annual mortality rate, but other places have a 10%, that doesn't make your 5% low. It just means it is not as bad as the 10%.
Nobody is moving to Belgium to get lower taxes. We want to decrease the taxes where we are. But that means we have to cut spending. A lot.
No, the populist call is that we need to tax the shit out of everyone richer than you then spend it on you in government free stuff programs.
Having taxes that are too high is not a relative observation. It's a benefit vs cost issue. Are the taxes we pay being used effectively? Do we pay more into the system than we need to? Is there a lot of graft in the system? Are taxes creating new government organizations that reduce individual freedom without providing something of equivalent value to society in exchange? Are the services we're paying for something that we democratically agree is necessary and useful or are the services the remnants of failed policy? Do our taxes get funneled into bailing out rich banks instead of helping the middle class or helping the poor move up into the middle class?
Just because the US pays less taxes than Sweden does not mean we are denied the right to point out that taxes are too high. It's relative to what we as a society want and what we actually get from those taxes, and not relative to what a person in another countries pays.
Also remember your intro to macroeconomics course. Saving money versus spending money has serious economic repercussions. And it is going to be difficult to compare different cultures and economies based on those metrics. Americans are not savers, and we tend to run our economy with the heat turned up higher than some other countries would find comfortable. (for better or for worse)
If the entire Earth had the same tax rate, we wouldn't say that taxes were average. What if the tax was 95% of your income above $10k? That would be high, but it wouldn't be higher relative to any other country if they were all the same. The argument is ridiculous.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Americans hate paying taxes because the US government is dysfunctional and doesn't use the tax money wisely. Here in Canada, we pay a lot more taxes than in the US, but there are far fewer people angry at the tax level than in the US because we get things for our money, most notably universal single-payer health care.
In counties like Sweden and Denmark that have really high tax rates, most people are OK with that because the government provides many services.
I really don't see a way out for the USA given the level that political discourse has sunk to. I'm just glad I don't live there.
Mark 2030 on your calendar. That's when the majority of baby boomers are retired, retirees will outnumber workers, and two-thirds of the federal budget will go to Social Security/Medicare. Taxes will have to go way up to pay for everything else.
Did anybody actually think that US taxes were high? They're pretty low, I pay way more income tax and sales tax than an American would, so I always assumed that Americans knew that their taxes were really low.
You get the largest military in the history of the planet. That's what stupid Americans want, so that's what stupid Americans get.
I don't respond to AC's.
I pay 10% of my salary in property taxes, and an assortment of sales taxes - neither of these are part of the article's analysis.
How about all the people paying 0% taxes, or negative taxes? You know... the people who do not work and actually receive freebies at the actual taxpayer's expense? If my tax dollars are going to support this on a massive scale, my taxes are too high. If you feel differently, put your money where your mouth is and donate more to charity.
Yet another article that thinks we need to give MORE money to corrupt politicians and their cronies.
The people have had their salaries stagnate for ages, and now greedy cronies want the government to tax more?
Talk about out of touch.
Sorry, your taxes are not high is the wrong way to go.
In the UK You pay both VAT (20%) and income tax (0% upto 10k 20% upto 40k 40% from 40k to 150k and the 45% on anything above that) and probably more. For example if you buy a car there's tax on that then road tax then petrol tax and if you want to drive into the centre of London a tax on that as well.
I don't have a problem paying higher taxes, as long as it goes to the right things (infrastructure, education, meaningful social services, etc). The problem is our government (especially federal) likes to burn our tax money on some pretty useless crap (exorbitant defense, contractors padding their sheets, etc).
It might help if we actually saw more benefit from our taxes.
Done.
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In the UK almost noone fills in a tax return for income tax. VAT - the sales tax - is always added to the displayed price, not afterwards. The ONLY tax of which this is not true is the local property tax; you have to pay that separately. Lo and behold, that's the one that the government works hard to freeze...
We fought a revolution over lack of representation even while paying taxes. Not because we had to just "pay taxes." Lose the "me me me me, screw you" attitude. Especially when you post on Slashdot over the Internet, a creation stemming back from the 1960s as a military project (DARPA) ... the project paid for with TAXES.
Oh for mod points
Taxation is theft. That is all.
I don't think anyone thinks that America's income taxes straight out are that high.
Plenty of people believe this even though it demonstrably isn't true. Most of them call themselves republicans or libertarians. Hypocritically they don't actually want less of the things those taxes are supposed to cover (medicare, military, etc) but they are perfectly content to push the bill off to their children.
But now add in property taxes, which are very significant, social security, etc.
Add in all the other taxes you want but it's a trivial exercise to find countries that tax their citizens at a significantly higher rate than the US. On the other hand many of them get substantial benefits like health care and college tuition that we deny or overcharge our citizens for though privatization.
This heading is dis-ingenius. Total tax load has meaning. Restricting that to only paycheck taxes has little meaning. I've lived in Chile. Taxes are considerable there, at all levels. The only thing that isn't reliably taxed in Chile are the ferias. But the country would shut down if they clamped down on those.
As long as taxes are non-zero the populist call will be taxes are too high. No matter how benefit, army, police, roads, civil structure, (health care in advanced nations), laws people get out of it, there will always be some who call for lower taxes.
What have the Romans ever done for us?
Or, as Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote: "Taxes are what we pay for civilized society..."
Stephan
I do certainly feel I get taxed MUCH more than what I get out of the system. Waaaay more.
We have a $600 Billion per year deficit as of 2016. You definitely aren't taxed more than the benefits that are doled out. Coincidentally our military budget last year was also right around $600 Billion so we could defund the military and make you whole if you want but it wouldn't lower your taxes a penny.
It's good to not need a safety net, but it's nice to have one when you do need it. It's the same logic many gun owners use, "better to have a gun and not need it than to need a gun and not have it." I find the logic consistent and persuasive in both cases.
I was surprised to find that Canada pays less than the US overall.
You shouldn't be. Canada is rather more sanely managed than much of the US.
And for that Canada has a rudimentary universal health care system, and the US has what?
The US has a schizophrenic public/private system where nobody is in a position to control costs. We have universal health care but only for retired and some (but not all) poor people. We have great hospitals but nobody to keep costs in check. We refuse to insure millions of people thereby costing ourselves far more money when they inevitably show up in the emergency department of a hospital to get treated at far higher cost. We allow drug companies to charge whatever they want because... reasons. If you wanted to design a financially irresponsible health care system you'd have a hard time developing one more irresponsible than the one the US has.
Crumbling infrastructure and an overpriced military that funnels money into the military's suppliers and from there to the executives of those suppliers.
Our military isn't so much over priced as over funded. We have WAY more military than we could possibly justify or need. We spend more on our military than then next 8 largest military budgets combined, most of whom are allies. We have an annual federal deficit of $600 billion and guess how much we spent on our military last year? Yep, $600 billion. We basically borrow every penny we spend on the military, thereby screwing future generations because baby boomers are paranoid idiots.
Europe is heavily dependent on VAT (Value added tax). Hence this comparison is NOT valid !!
most of the money I pay in taxes goes to buying more military hardware and endless wars.
People keep saying this, despite the fact that it just isn't true. Most of your Federal tax dollars are spent on non-discretionary areas generally referred to as "entitlements" In 2016, Defense spending was $584 Billion. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and other non-discretionary spending totalled $2.4 Trillion. And please, before someone goes off on a rant about "Social Security isn't an entitlement 'cause I've paid into it all my life and I've earned it", go look up the definition of entitlement.
Some of our taxes are far higher than the average for that type of tax. Some of our taxes are far lower than the average for that type of tax. Some people pay far more tax than they would in the average country, and some people pay far less taxes than they would in the average country.
Because the vast majority of people get healthcare through their employer
In other words they are being paid less than they would be otherwise if the employer did not have to buy health insurance, so the employees are still paying for this benefit through lower wages. In other countries companies can pay more because the government pays for health care. Thus it still has an impact on the person.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Your employer "matches your contribution", when you pay the taxes. So you see you are making 100 and paying 33. Your employer is really paying 133 with 66 going to the government. Did these people, who want to raise your taxes, count the employer contribution?
You get the biggest, best-equipped military in the world.
Which we borrow every penny of funding for. Our deficit last year was $600 billion and so was our defense department budget. We borrowed literally every penny we spent on our military because we have a bunch of paranoid xenophobic republicans who break out in hives when they hear the word taxes. Heaven forbid we actually pay for the services we want...
You've done that at the expense of healthcare, education, and social programs. It's a choice you make every election cycle.
Some of us anyway. Personally I'm baffled how much of our country votes against their own self interest and is all to happy to burden their children with huge amounts of debt.
A dollar is too much, if that dollar goes to a police state that spies, lies, and commits mass murder, like mine does.
That really ignores a few basic points.
First, the U.S. is a Democratic Republic, NOT a nation with a monarchy, a dictatorship, Communist rule, or Socialism. That puts it in a rather unique position as far as having a government structure that encourages less taxation and more self-reliance. (Not interested in trying to start the whole "which is better?" debate here... but just stating facts. I'd expect these other types of governance to impose higher taxes because they focus on the people working for the greater good of the whole, with government at the center, orchestrating things. In America, government is, at least in theory, "by the people, for the people" and exists to only do the basic tasks outlined in the Constitution and Bill of Rights.)
Second, taxation in America is all spread out. The list of taxes is huge, and comes at the local and state level as much as at the Federal level. I'm no expert on the subject,but I'm confident that in many nations on their survey, taxation is much more centralized. In America, I can't even pay a cellphone or land line phone bill without getting hit with a list of various "nickle and dime" taxes for my municipality, city and state, followed by the Federally imposed ones like the FUSF (money they force you to pay to subsidize cheaper telecommunications offerings for the poor).
Health Insurance taxes (and fines) are income related.
So, in a sense, are property taxes since they are deductible to certain income levels. This actually can reduce the tax burden of income taxes, but the individual still pays more taxes overall. Renters also pay property taxes, albeit indirectly.
Soc Sec and Medicare are a gamble. If you die early - you get nothing. Contrast this with personal savings or even an IRA.
Also for most people long-term care is a big risk. Insurance is expensive, many people lose their house and much of their savings at end of life. This is also a tax, relative to most other industrialized countries where end-of-life and custodial disability care are covered by the government.
Also all that debt interest is looming and will eventually become another type of tax. It is already depressing interest rates which is also a type of tax on savings and investment.
Americans are tax-fucked very badly when you do a meaningful comparison.
Just because people in other countries were stupid enough to allow taxes to get so high does not mean we in America have to accept that.
First, other countries have a higher tax rate because they are socialist or communist, but America is capitalist.
Second, in America we believe in keeping and enjoying the fruits of our labor, not giving it to a bunch of greedy bastards.
We Americans will never tolerate anything above 50% for any amount of time. 30% is ideal, and all it needs to be. Hillary Clinton indicated she would have raised it to 70%. I personally will withhold any taxes above 50% No Exceptions.
You are right about most, but not 401K and other retirement vehicles.
It is possible to invest in annuities, bonds, real estate and even cash to diversify your investments and reduce the gamble option.
Don't forget that both private and government pension plans are also a gamble. Many have gone bankrupt, been raided, and govts. can always just change the rules to take away your "guaranteed" benefits.
There are no guarantees, but diversification is the best strategy to reduce the risk of running out of resources in old age.
Income tax is collected from the public to pay the interest on the money borrowed by the U.S. government from the privately owned Federal Reserve corporation.
So, yes, taxes are WAY too high and do not flow back into the economy as many people might believe.
Yeah its awful the way we don't let sick and retired people eat dog food and die.... see thats part of the actual helping that taxes do, but we waste a much higher amount of our tax dollars on military spending than other developed countries, for what we pay in taxes we could have much better roads, public transit, education benefits than we do now.
Instead we have a bunch of wars that do nothing for our citizens which we end up paying for for decades in terms of veterans support and we have crumbling infrastructure and schools that are struggling to keep up with those in other first world countries. Personally I think we could do to spend our tax dollars in a much better ways before we even get into how we might increase the tax revenue of the government to provide for things like universal healthcare.
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
My CPA wife does the tax returns for a fortune 50 company for the US,UK and Canada. The corporate rate is the issue, not the individual rate. She works for a very tax conservative company, ie they pay hundreds of millions of dollars in tax every single year and don't try to do any crazy tax loop holes.
Sorry, 71% is high.
That was my total tax burden last year, between Federal, State, Local, Sales, Property/Real Estate, Excise, Gasoline, Social Security, Self Employment, Medicare, and whatever other tax that I had the visibility of to track, and yes, I kept track of every penny. It was a royal pain in the ass, especially for non-itemized or undisclosed taxes like gasoline tax and excise taxes on food, alcoholic beverages, and utilities.
71% of my gross income. Gone. The rest went to living expenses and some savings.
Yeah its awful the way we don't let sick and retired people eat dog food and die
Who said that? Certainly not me. Regardless of how you, I, or anyone else feels about these things, the fact remains that we spend far more money on social safety nets than we do on defense.
There was a time when Americans were apologetically proud of not being socialist.
-Dave
Try adding up all the taxes that you pay some time. We pay lower income taxes but.... Look at some of the following....
1. Property Taxes
2. Sales Taxes
3. Luxury Taxes
4. Capital Gains Taxes
5. Ad Valorem Taxes
If you look at the whole picture we pay just as much as most of the other countries out there that take 50% of their citizens income. The other countries are just not as sneaky about it.
You have to fund the country somehow and with how much our country gives away to others in bribes and flat out wastes we pay a LOT!
If the public perceives that they are getting an appropriate value for their money, the absolute percent value of taxes is rather irrelevant. It's how the funds are utilized and the end results (or lack thereof) that feed the perception of too high. If they produce perceived value for the money, then much fewer people would think that the taxes are excessive.
Is this title supposed to invalidate complaints over tax increases? It fails, horribly.
I think a lot of those values might be a bit suspect.
#1 Apparently Greece has high taxes, but do people pay them? Anyway with everything that has happened there in the last couple of years perhaps that is why they are higher, or perhaps reporting just isn't very good.
#2) This is basically saying that the US pays MORE income tax than Canada. As someone who pays Canadian taxes, I find that very hard to believe.
#3) It said parents in Canada pay on average 12% income tax (a 19% difference)? While not a parent, I do know some, and I find that very hard to believe also. Should that be the case I should probably start making some babies.
The liar in chief and his right wing buddies do not accept facts. They actually have Americans who also can not deal with facts at all. If these cheesy creeps feel as if they are over taxed then they are over taxed. That is their reality. If they were halfway alert they might notice that inflation is the greatest tax put upon us all.
I don't mind paying taxes if I get something back for them. What I don't like is paying taxes and the only thing I get back is another aircraft carrier. I don't mind paying taxes to support good schools but we spend more money on education without getting good value in return. I also resent paying more so a billion dollar corporation can go full deadbeat and skip paying taxes.
It's also an issue of representation. I pay the bills but my Congressman doesn't represent me, he represents the people putting up the money to get him elected.
This is a much bigger issue than just the number on the tax bill.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Problem with this study is "Too High" is an opinion and not a fact. You may feel the taxes are Too-High and I might feel the taxes are Too-Low. How it falls on some scale of other countries is not relevant.
Cool story, let me try that. I'm going to opt out of my company health insurance and see if my salary goes up.....nope didn't work.
Plainly you have never quit a job at a company and come back to work as a contractor.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
But it's relative. We are not a tribe, you owe me nothing and I owe you nothing. STFU and take care of your own shit.
And yes my taxes are too high.
...is why US taxes are so high when they include less than some other countries? In many of the countries the taxes pay for things like healthcare and other things that people in the US pay on top of the taxes to get the same basic service.
For the services to tax ratio, the middle and upper classes pay a hell of a lot. Plus the US is tops in corporate income taxes, which is basically just another income tax on us, since customers pay it. So again, another lie. Country Corporate income tax rate (2016) Combined corporate tax rate (2016) United States 35.00% 38.92% France 34.43% 34.43% Belgium 33.00% 33.99% Italy 27.50% 31.29%
Taxation is Theft, if you like socialism so much, I'll pay for your plane ticket to N. Korea.
Taxation is Theft, if you like socialism so much, I'll pay for your plane ticket to N. Korea.
You can't excuse something bad by pointing out it's worse elsewhere. Tell me, would you buy excusing Jim Crow by saying it was better than slavery? Not to say that taxation is as bad as those things, but it's the same argument.
for such a low UID, that had NOTHING to do with the comment you replied to. Getting senile in your old age gramps?
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
And the majority of the revenue for those comes from taxes specifically laid to collect revenue for those.
And regardless of how you or anyone else feels about it, we spend far more money on the illusion of defense than we should.... by a vast amount. In 2015 the military ate up 54% of our discretionary spending. https://www.nationalpriorities...
And where did it all go? Well, we can't actually say because the DoD hasn't completed an audit since 1990. THAT is how fucked up they are at handling money. http://www.pogo.org/straus/iss...
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
The US tax code is an unholy pile of crap. Personal income tax rates are generally lower than in other developed countries. On the other hand, corporate tax rates are higher. But there are so many loopholes and exemptions that it all boils down to what sort of tax planning and advice you can afford. Individuals have a few write-offs available to them until they hit the AMT. Then, they pretty much pay the tax schedule rate. Corporations can whittle their taxes down to near zero. If you can't get your corporate rate down into the single digits, fire your CFO. This is why we (in the USA) are bent out of shape about our tax system. It's not just the percentages.
Most people want either less corruption or more of a chance to participate in it.
Have gnu, will travel.
More than a third my income comes out as taxes. It's pretty bad.
Perhaps you should take a look at how much money we actually spend on "schools" before you call for more spending there.
Just because taxes could be higher, and just because they are even higher for somebody else, doesn't mean they aren't high.
Proud neuron in the Slashdot hivemind since 2002.
Access Denied at my work...lol
So, I'm supposed to feel better about getting raped because people in other countries are getting raped more often?
Right off the bat the article indicates it's only looking at Income Tax. I get taxed by State and Federal for Income Tax. I get taxed by the County for my home and vehicles. I get taxed by the State, County and City depending on where I shop, not to mention the "Convenience Tax" of shopping at the local mall. Smokers get taxed by every tax agency that can get their grubby little mitts into the tax code. Anyone putting gasoline in their car is paying multiple taxes on that. I get taxed for Internet, Cable TV, Cell Phone Service... My Federal & State Income tax rate combine for about 20% of my paycheck. Add in every other tax I pay hidden and otherwise and it's closer to 40%. Write an article that compares true tax rates and then see where the U.S. falls in that list.
Here in Colorado we have what's called TABOR, the TAx Payer's Bill Of Rights which says no new tax can be passed without being put on a ballot and approved by voters. The politician solution? There are no new taxes, only fees, which don't have to be put to a vote.
And the majority of the revenue for those comes from taxes specifically laid to collect revenue for those.
Only if your definition of "majority" is "significantly less than half". Social net outlays: $2.4 Trillion. Payroll tax revenue: $1.1 Trillion. And in case you missed it in the fine print on that Wiki page I liked to, the expenditures on the "Medicare" and "Other" slices of the social net pie are AFTER offsets from premiums and other "offsetting receipts" are applied, so it's even worse than these figures make it look.
If you want to complain about accountability, how about finding out where the $12 Trillion in Quantitative Easing since 2008 has gone?
Yeah its awful the way we don't let sick and retired people eat dog food and die.... see thats part of the actual helping that taxes do, but we waste a much higher amount of our tax dollars on military spending than other developed countries
Great, I'm sure you were all smiles and happiness then when President Trump called Germany on their under-funding of NATO, and pushing to have other countries cover their defense obligations (instead of assuming the US will always do it for them), right?
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Property Taxes, and Vat Taxes, are a sizable part of the overall burden. I would say they amount to 1/4 of the taxes I pay. And I live in a place with low property Taxes. High Property Tax Areas, like most cities in the U.S., It could be half the tax you pay.
Most European countries rely heavily on sales taxes/ VAT. Such a tax does very little to distort people's incentives or discourage productive behavior. The result is that they have significant revenue (and, unless they're profligate, less deficit spending) with less deadweight loss to the economy.
In the US, we rely primarily on taxing productive behavior (payroll, savings, income, corporate taxes).
We also fill the tax code with enough loopholes and targeted cuts that it resembles a sieve. The targeted cuts are effectively government spending/subsidies; they may seem well intentioned in isolation but on the whole they're doing more harm than good. (Bush Sr.'s advisers had the motto "broaden the base, lower the rate," which is part of why some of the Clinton years ran a surplus. I imagine the loopholes were back in force by midway through Bush Jr's presidency.)
Even if we have lower taxes on the whole, in many cases our taxes are doing more harm to businesses and workers. We can change this.
Consumption taxes have seemed to be a third rail- an untouchable topic - in US politics, largely because by themselves they are regressive. But there are plenty of ways to implement an overall progressive tax system using them, like the "Bradford X tax."
We should also shift some of the burden of "productivity taxes" to Pigouvian taxes, which tax things that cause costs to society. A good example was the revenue-neutral carbon tax proposed by Republicans in Washington state (and shot down by Democrats because it didn't give them more money to advance their social agenda).
Again, it's not that there aren't solutions - solutions which reasonable people on both sides of the aisle should find acceptable. It's that we can't scrounge up the political will and get elected representatives to act reasonably.
Slashdot, You're owned by the very Jews who created the Income tax system on Jeckyl Island 100 years ago.
Take your tax usury back to Europe , you know exactly what you did, and how you fucked the American people with your current form of income taxes, which did not exist before 100 years ago.
Then you filthy kike jew scum use your propaganda networks, writing articles like this stating "well even though you are a slave, your slavery isn't that bad"
The brotherhood is waking up. The Reich will return!
Taken collectively, my largest expense is tax.
I expect this is the case for a lot of Americans, due to the combination:
- relatively low essential expenses (food and fuel)
- high incomes (compared to other countries)
- large population (lots of complainers!)
When people realize that a large slice of their gross income is an expenditure over which they have no direct control, yeah, they're going to complain about it, regardless of how much tax someone on the other side of the planet is paying.
Yours [dskoll's] was one of the "insightful" moderated comments, even one of the more insightful ones, but it seems for rather small values of insight. A few mentions of "progressive taxation", but none moderated up. Just my delusion that Slashdot used to be much deeper in days of yore? Also funnier, and not one "funny" mod on this humor-rich target.
There are various principles for personal taxation. I favor progressive taxation that increases the tax burden on people who can afford it, mostly because they are getting most of the benefits from the civilization that the taxes pay for, but also because poor people are human, too, and their suffering should be reduced when possible.
It is obvious that the current principles of personal taxation in America are working to make the rich richer and the poor poorer. My interpretation of Ryan's proposed "tax reforms" is that the so-called Republicans have realized they can't squeeze any more blood out of the poor people, so they are going to squeeze more out of the people who aren't poor. Yet. Unfortunately, this will NOT solve the fake problem of the super-rich people. There is NO amount of money that would "solve" such greed.
Corporate taxation should also be considered in the broader topic of taxation. Obviously the current American tax system supports corporate cancerism with many industries collapsing to one or two companies. Capitalism requires meaningful competition (per my sig), but cancer worship is NOT capitalism.
I would like to propose a new principle of corporate taxation to increase human freedom. Progressive corporate taxation based on market share. Once a company's market share gets too high and starts reducing the customers' freedom, then its tax rates start rising. Don't think of it as a penalty for success. Rather the winners are being rewarded by being encouraged to reproduce and COMPETE with more choices. Going farther, I think there should be special tax incentives when a giant company divides itself into directly competing companies.
Rather than protecting a monopolist's profits by fighting against innovation and dangerous changes, the company's would be motivated to keep right on competing and innovating. In cases where there really is a natural monopoly, the extra taxes should mostly be invested in (1) carefully regulating the monoplist and (2) researching (and even investing in) ways to break the monopoly.
Lots more details available upon polite request, as the old joke goes.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
I've always wondered in the US why we don't amend the Constitution and implement a Federal Wealth (Property) tax instead of taxing income - there is a lot more wealth inequality than wage inequality.
You Americans may average $53K in salary, less $13K in taxes, and take-home $40K, but what do those taxes cover? From my interviews, that same average American pays $10K in insurances, bringing the household income down to $30K, which ain't enough to do anything but live. Take $5K for the car, $5K for food, and a $20K mortgage, and what's left?
The taxes go somewhere. Counting them without counting their effect is completely meaningless.
"Not the highest" != "Not high"
Just because someone else's taxes are higher doesn't mean that America's taxes aren't higher than they should be.
Your waters are muddy, but since I'm not sure if it's intentional, I'll assume the best of intentions. You left out the cost of service on the national debt, which is something like 200 Billion this year (I think I'm close), and that comes out of the general fund. SocSec and Medicare do not come out of the general fund, and are (in essence, and occasionally adjusted) paid by separately-funded income streams. Your fixation on the word "entitlement" is interesting, because these are the social safety net programs that see that those people who cannot provide sufficiently for themselves (or at all) are not burdening the earning power of their families or costing us all more by addressing that poverty in other ways... crime, unpaid bills, etc.
If you want to see the sick, old and severely disabled also suffer the indignities of absolute, irrevocable suffering, abject poverty and starvation, then by all means fight these "entitlements", but you'll be fighting the working people by encouraging unhealthy living conditions, and less social and economic mobility as they have to shoulder those costs by themselves in an environment where wages have been stagnant for 30 years.
I'll grant you that there must absolutely be people who are on SocSec disability who can and should be working, and any number of crooked ways that medicaid and medicare money is mis-spent or scammed away, but we also have a lot of old people in the country and a lot of them spent their money on their kids and their homes and cars and college all along the way through their earning years, and it's that long-term contribution to the economy in general that "entitles" them to the reassurance that the safety net brings.
So, yeah, "entitlements" account for a lot of spending, but that spending comes into being because of our social contract and because of the economic investment that citizens have made, more than the actual value of the specific payroll deductions that feed or have fed those funding streams.
.. pa-ra-bo-la, pa-ra-bo-la, 2 pi R, 2 pi R, where's your latus rectum, where's your latus rectum, 2 pi R
Just because our taxes aren't the highest doesn't mean they aren't too high.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
In the United Kingdom taxes go to cover National Health Service. In the United States health care is provided by paying premiums. The study should either 1) remove the portion of tax in the U.K. that covers NHS, or 2) increase the amount paid in taxes plus premiums to allow an apples to apples comparison.
/nt
The article uses a fallacy. High taxes are an Absolute condition, not a comparative condition.
Just because some other countries have jumped onto this extreme taxation bandwagon does not mean taxes are suddenly low.
BASICALLY, Unreasonably high is anything above 10%.
I'm not fixated on the word "entitlement". I used it because its dictionary definition is, "the right to guaranteed benefits under a government program," and because it's a useful term to describe the bulk of the Federal government's non-discretionary spending. A lot of people seem to think it means "an unearned benefit", which is why they get all lathered up when someone refers to Social Security as an entitlement program, and why I added the "before someone goes off on a rant" comment.
For the record -- I am not opposed to social safety net programs, and I'm pretty sure I didn't say anything in my previous post to give the impression that I am, unless you think that pointing out that something is expensive means you don't like it. I agree that it's a social contract, but it will be out of money in another 17 years or so unless something dramatic is done to save it.
Income tax in Australia is significantly lower, yet we've got much better government services such as heavily subsidized medications and welfare.
We don't even need to pay tax if we earn less than $18,000.
After living a few years in the US, I'm quite surprised to see my taxes burned in misiles, military toys and who knows what other crap. I don't see improvements in my surroundings. Roads and infrastructure is crap, streets are dirty, no good public transport, education is expensive, healthcare is beyond expensive, and so on...
When I was leaving in Europe I paid more in taxes, but I "saw" a huge chunk of them in the places and social model around me.
What makes the average tax burden in Europe so high is middle-class taxes: that's what pays for the European welfare state. So, when you hear the Warrens, Clintons, and Sanders out there saying that the US should become more like Europe, you need to understand that in order to pay for that, taxes on people making $50000 and up would have to go up by 10-15%; US top marginal tax rates are already comparable to European top marginal tax rates.
For example, an average wage earner in Germany pays 39.6% income tax, while he pays 25.8% in the US (the difference is even more pronounced because the average income earner in Germany earns substantially less than in the US, even in terms of $PPP).
REALLY gettin' tired of this bullshit and the racist / this ist / that ist horseshit... how bout I fucking work... and I keep what I fucking worked for.
The USA had NO taxes. But, roads were built, military was funded, schools were built. Get rid of income tax, which PUNISHES ACHIEVEMENT. Ever notice a lot of the so called super rich, don't take an income? It's because they are smart, knowing if they have a large income, they will be taxed on it. Get rid of the 16th amendment, replace it with a consumption tax. Prebate for the things like food/rent, so those at the low end won't be hurt. A fair/flat tax would also generate a lot more revenue, and this nation would become a safe haven for other nations to invest their money. If you don't buy crap, you won't be taxed. And, those big ticket items would mean those at the top end would pay a higher percentage. Also, with a consumption tax, illegal aliens would still be paying something for everything they purchase. Plus, the "built in" tax on all goods and services would be eliminated. That, or if some company tried to keep the higher prices of the built in tax, plus an average 22% flat tax, their items would be 22% higher, than their competitors. Income tax, is nothing more than control and power for government.
but we should not lockup pop users hell we can tax pop sales and make alot of bank.
oops pot and pop
I could give 2 shits what other countries tax rates are, it's my money that i worked my ass off for, not the government to waste. We literally fought a revolution over this shit so stop trying to downplay it.
Understandable, but sometimes looking at how other people do things can be instructive. Maybe even worth one or two shits.
Where I live the vast, vast, VAST majority of workers pay their taxes by PAYE. Vast.
That is, the employer pays the taxes for them and the worker's bank account is simply direct-credited $PAY-$TAX every pay period.
The worker never sees the taxable money nor has to think about it unless they have a change of employment status or some other mitigating factor.
The only other significant tax is sales tax, which is built into the price of every good and service with a few rare exceptions.
This annual circus of "doing your taxes" that we see Americans go through just makes us shake our heads.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
âThat premise isn't useful. â âA useful metric would be something like "tax dollar per what you get", e.g. Healthcare. I bet the USA is High (bad) on that metric.â Other countries may have higher taxes but they also get more for their buck.
but what we get in exchange for them could use some improvement.
Combine our taxes with out of pocket expenses for healthcare and you start to understand how fucking expensive America is.
Any dipshit can say our taxes are low, but they're not getting the whole picture.
The point is we don't get much for our tax dollars, at least at the federal level. No health care, no say in the election process /rant
I'd pay more federal taxes if I received tangible benefits for my contribution. What our federal taxes do go for is personal protection for the petrochemical industries overseas interests, travel benefits for national reps and senators.
My state/local taxes get me part of my health care benefits, pays for the roads in my area.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
You seem to be forgetting that the person posting that almost certainly knows squat about taxation, companies, or such things.
They are also certainly a salary earner who things THEY pay all the tax, and everyone else is cheating the system.
Deductions have been twisted by many many special cases by SOME companies and individuals, but the basic concept of deductions
is of course core to company tax, and without it you are taxing revenue, not profit, which immediately destroys a WHOLE range of types of
business (basically anything that makes a profit margin of less than 50%... which is a damn lot of the economy!).
Most salary earners dont have a clue about business or business taxation, unfortunately.
They should give it a go, and find out life is not all roses, especially for small businesses and sole proprietors.
Well, yeah, if you use $38,000 as your income base, then US taxes look low.
Try it again with a real income, and you won't get 32% for the U.S. -- you'll be looking at the same ~55% that the rest of the socialisms pay
Oh I wish. You risk paying up to about 63% income tax. Then there is a 25% sales tax on everything. My last energy for 300 kwh was around 200 DKK on top of that is slammed 700DKK in taxes and government fees (100USD=650DKK). The chart is useless in int current form and does not paint the picture of what life is for a normal taxpayer willing to work long hours or someone in a well paid job. Tuen there is the house value tax, another firm of robbery, a tax on the potential value that the house might be worth at at a given time, energy taxes on gasoline and so on. This is why more and more Danes are realizing the futility of breaking their backs working, as the government simply swoops in and bleeds them dry. You see very little of your money after all the different taxes you pay in real life, something that for an ordinary person differs wildly from the stats shown in the chart.
This chart is thoroughly misleading, at least from my perspective. I live in the UK and my taxation is as follows:
Marginal Income Tax (includes National Insurance which is our Social Security) - 62%
Student Loan (which thankfully I have nearly paid off) - 10%
Sales tax - 20%
That means, assuming I spend 30% of my income on stuff I'm paying 78p in tax on every additional pound I earn.
That's well over twice the number suggested in the chart.
As a note, my US colleagues (who actually earn significantly more than me) pay less than half the effective tax rate that I do.
One important part missing is healthcare. In most (all?) other developed nations, one of the things you get in return for your taxes is health care. In the US, that's extra.
> At the top are Belgium and France
France is brim full of large nuclear-electric power stations and TGV bullet train lines. Taxes paid for those projects.
Belgium is a rather dys-functional european mini-country, one part french-ish, one part dutch-ish and has been running without a majority coalition backed government for several years. Somehow they seem to operate just fine, which is possibly explained by the high taxation producing enough money to keep itself running.
For the sheer amount, Germany surely pays the longest list of numbers followed by zeros, when it comes to taxation. The 28-member European Union essentially runs on money milked from the 70 million hard-working germans. It's definitely a better scheme then letting those germans spend all that money on bulding mega-tanks, ballistic missiles, poison gases and futuristic warplanes, as they used to do until 1945. (Usually a large amount of weapons don't get to sit on the shelf, the politico / military guys find uses for them and the result isn't pretty.)
Once you earn around EUR 40,000 per year, you are in the highest tax bracket. Assume you earn that much. Now assume that your employer pays you a EUR 1,000 bonus for good performance. First, the employer needs to pay his share of social security (health, pension, unemployment) - around 35% of gross - so the cost of the bonus to the employer is actually EUR 1,350. Then you pay your share of social security (around 13% of gross), so your before income taxes is EUR 870. You then pay 50% income tax, which leaves you with EUR 435 initially, but actually city taxes are around 8% of the income tax paid, so you pay another EUR 35 for that. This means that your net income is EUR 400. You then go to the shop and buy a new TV for EUR 400. The shop pays 21% VAT, so they only get EUR 316. To sum up: in order for buy a TV worth EUR 316, your employer needs to pay EUR 1,350. So based on income tax, social security and VAT only (there are of course more types of taxes), 77% of the money paid by an employer goes to the state. Of course, the state provides valuable services, but I find the magnitude of this number shockingly high!
How does an illegal immigrant pay SS and Medicare/Medicaid taxes without a SS ID number?
The answer is they don't. All the employed illegals I know are not on the books and are paid in cash.
Let's re-evaluate a bit more. Since, health insurance is now required by law. Let's add that into taxes. Now, where does America stand?
The truth is, it's not just about taxes, it is about taxes vs benefits. Those other countries that exceed American taxes, they are socialist nations providing a multitude of benefits including free health care, free education, etc, etc, etc. America has very high taxes for what we actually receive from our government.
I am also curious, is Social Security included as part of U.S. taxes? Because it is a tax,
Because most of the expenditures of "protecting our interests" (e.g. sending aircraft carriers all over the world) are to benefit the interest of the rich elites and not the middle class.
Residential property tax might be low. If you had to pay half the rate commercial / industrial has to pay, however, you'd be rioting in the streets, and throwing tea into the harbor and shit.
You have to be kidding me? Am I supposed to feel grateful that I already pay more than half of my income in taxes???? Eff the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, damn socialists!
and the one I replied to had nothing to do with the comment above that (also mine).
The fact is that it doesn't matter how much money is spent on social security, it doesn't matter what the percentage is, if we cut our military spending to a level that was in line with the spending done by any other major country (hell, lets make it as much as the next 2 countries combined) we would save 300 billion a year. For that money we could have the kinds of services that other modern countries enjoy. Universal healthcare, free state universities... actual investment in infrastructure and transportation.
And every time I bring something like this up someone trots out this old shit about how much we spend on entitlements. Thats what we SHOULD be spending tax money on. Tax money should be used to provide services that people need in a society and what we really don't need is a larger military and more wars.
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
Yeah, I think its pretty much bullshit that countries use us as the world police... but then we kind of set our asses up to be that ever since we started jumping into proxy wars all over the fucking globe.
I would like to see us stop but hey, Trump was also more than willing to dump a shit ton of missiles into Syria so apparently he doesn't really have as much of a problem with us being in that role as he would like to claim. If you want countries to stop expecting you to fight wars for them the first thing you should do is stop blowing shit up on their behalf.
"In America, first you get the sugar, then you get the power, then you get the women..." -H. Simpson
We aren't them, they aren't us. The comparison isn't apples to apples. Enough. I could give a rats ass what the EU taxes. Tjis tax everything so we can provide everything isn't the US, that's an EU thing and since statistically we are a center right country we don't want the all encompassing government tit.
Find 35 other non-socialistic or communistic governments. Then we'll be able to get an accurate comparison. When the government owns and runs everything they collect for everything. There are many services USA pays for as private fees rather than taxes. If you make comparisons, make them accurate.
The usual cherry picked statistics to support class warfare. Having listened to this shit argument for 30 some odd years you'd think it would just dry up and blow away. If you took all the wealth of the rich it would fund the government for about a week, the problem we have is excessive spending not too low or too high taxes.
Murphy was an optimist
but can we please say 'Holland second" (or at least before Belgium)??
This is a totally irrelevant, and irresponsible, reporting!
As many of my fellow readers here have accurately pointed out, this is the proverbial comparing apples to oranges.
Other tax structures around the globe offer differing services, like healthcare and other social services.
Add in the fees for things others are getting and you will see how expensive life in the USA really is!
And, what about the military (NATO too) we tend to overspend on here in the USA; which many other countries do NOT spend, and rely on us for?
It is totally irresponsible for any reporter, or slashdot contributor, to allow such bullshit, incomplete stats to potentially mislead readership!
SHAME ON Y'ALL!!!
Self-importance and self-indulgence is the root of ALL evil.
FYI, Here is the actual quote from Romney. I suspect many have not seen it:
Romney told donors, "47 percent of voters would chose Obama "no matter what" because they are people "who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that's an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what. These are people who pay no income tax."
What seems lost in the world as well as shashdot these days, is that politics is not a team sport. Ideas do matter. Facts do matter. Not what you infer. Not your emotions. Self government is a rare and special thing, but it does involve rational people making rational choices. Two rational people can disagree about the course of action when dealing with a fact. Irrational conversations result when people change facts or insert their bias as fact. This is exactly what the OP and others in this thread have done.
"Liberalism is a very noble idea, currently controlled by some very bad people. Be sure you do not get the two confused.
Yes they are. What other countries are taxed doesn't matter to us, only what we are taxed and what we get for it.
And don't go saying, that money is imaginary and the government owns all the money anyway.
Economics is based on the laws of thermodynamics, and that is not something that humans can change.
(No matter how many paper dollars, or equivilent, that they print!)
I guess our taxes aren't that high if you compare them to outright Socialist countries. Of course their taxes are higher: Their governments provide a larger service to their people.
What does our government provide us with? Fluffy marshmallows that say everything is okay and we should invest in stuff. Meanwhile, the cost of living sites out there compare cost of living now with cost of living way back in the olden days and say: See! It was almost the same. They always forget that the cost of living then was for one wage earner, not two or more, as is now the case. The entire feminist movement was about lowering wages and increasing outputs.
Just because the US isn't at the top of the list doesn't mean our taxes aren't high.
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
The tax numbers given usually don't include the burden caused by borrowing (which at least in theory crowds voluntary-sector borrowing making interest rates higher, and in any event will be paid by somebody *) or the decrease in the value of the dollar caused by monetary inflation.
Add those two to explicit taxes and -- ta da! -- you get government spending.
Come out against that, and see what that gets you.
There's no time like the present. Well, the past used to be.
I was lucky enough to discover while doing my taxes that I owe about $1000 to the Feds because I didn't work part of last year, had no money for insurance, was not eligible for insurance through my employer (contract house) and as a result have to pay a "shared responsibility" penalty for every month of 2016.
So the upshot is that I had to pay for someone else's insurance. I also owe because my withholding was only about 10% even though my tax bill comes to some 20% of my income. Thanks, Obama.
Most of the countries with higher tax rates have subsidized health care. Add what the average American pays in medical premiums and I bet we zoom up that chart.